The Wasted Generation: Memories of the Romanian Journey from Capitalism to Socialism and Back 9780367297152, 0813318335

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
1 What Made Him Flee
2 The Origins of Social Revolt
Father Bankrupt
Fuel for Fascism
My First Steps in the "Movement"
My Journalist Apprenticeship
3 A Unique Historical Event: Conspiracy Between King and Communists
Pătrăşcanu and Bodnăraş
In the Royal Palace Through the Back Door
The Arrest of Antonescu
Baron Killinger Protests
10 P.M.: The King's Call to Arms
4 The Stalinist Faith
A Newspaper as a Party Task
The Soviet Fifth Column in the Party
Stalin: Maker of Party Leaders
Vyshinsky and the Petru Groza Cabinet
People's Democracies and Cold War
Purge of the Soviet Agents
Sentimentalnîi Chelovek
5 The National Backlash
It All Started in Budapest
When the Bear Let Its Prey Go
The Seesaw of Class Ideology and National Strategy
Stalinist Desatellitization
Down with Economic and Military Integration!
Nikita Khrushchev: Smart but Boorish
Big Brother in a Fix
Reminiscences About Gheorghiu-Dej
My Turning Point
6 The Two Faces of Communist Society
The Nice and Kind Face
Political Segregation
The Style of Party Activists
The Other Face
7 Red Diplomat in Washington
Appointed by an American Farmer
Second Discovery of America
My Brief Encounter with Senator McCarthy
Smuggling the Platinum Catalyst Through Diplomatic Pouch
8 The Illiterate Couple
I Knew Him Well
I Knew Her Too
Training Their Children with the Securitate
Le Coup de Parti
The Four Phases of Ceauşescu
The Mini-Cultural Revolution
Foreign Debt First
"I Decide What Is Scientific!"
My Relations with Ceauşescu
The Orchestrated Cult
Why Did He Last That Long?
Why Did Communism Fail?
9 The Prelude of the Romanian Revolution
The Abortive Military Coup
The Braşov Riots
Dissidence in the Party
In Washington and London
Promised Land Revisited
The Meeting with Gorbachev
The Letter of Six
Securitate: Ceauşescu's Praetorian Guard
The Real American Spy
10 The Inside Story of the Revolution
Timişoara: The Spark That Lit the Blaze
Revolution on Television
The National Salvation Front
The Urban Guerrilla Warfare
The Night of the Generals
The Christmas Day Trial
Whodunit of Terrorists: Who Were They?
The Unfinished Business of the Revolution
11 The Day After ...
Twenty Years Until Democracy
The May 1990 Election and the NSF
If Not, a Head Shall Fall!
The Terrorists Are Still Missing
Shock Therapy Does Not Work in Romania
Why Center-Right?
Epilogue
Notes
Chronology of Events
International Perspectives: A Collection of Media and Policy Discussion
Index and List of Prominent Romanians
About the Book and Author

Citation preview

The Wasted Generation

Silviu Brucan

The Wasted Generation Memories of the Romanian Journey from Capitalism to Socialism and Back

Silviu Brucan

ISBN 978-0-367-29715-2

www.routledge.com  an informa business

THE WASTED GENERATION

"'Have you ever had a fishbone in your throat? You cannot spit it out, you cannot swallow it in. Well I was a fishbone in Ceau~escu's throat'-Brucan answered when I asked him why Romania let him leave after he broke the rules and publicly criticized it." The Boston Globe, 25 June 1988 "Silviu Brucan, a 74 ans, est la principale tete pensante du Conseil du Front de Salut Nationale." Liberation, 30 Dec. 1989 "Silviu Brucan ist der geistige Fuhrer der Revolution in Rumanien" Bild am Sonntag, 7 Jan. 1990 "Each time Brucan appears on Romanian television, the whole nation holds its breath: millions of people watch and listen to the old man, bewitched by his masterful discourse." Die Welt, 8Jan. 1990 "The guiding force of the Council appears to be Mr. Brucan." The New York Times, 26Jan. 1990 "Mr. Brucan is regarded as the Front's leading strategist."

.

The Guardian, 5 Feb. 1990

"He is the Cardinal Richelieu of the Front. At his 74 years, he is still vigorous, very lively, formulating his ideas with amazing clarity." Literatumaya Gazeta, Moscow, 11 March 1990 "Brucan was a key figure in the movement that toppled Ceau~escu from power." Dagens Nyheter, 18 Feb. 1991 "Silviu Brucan was the mastermind of the Romanian Revolution." Yomiuri Shinbun, 20June 1991

THE WASTED GENERATION Memoirs of the Romanian Journey from Capitalism to Socialism and Back

Silviu Brucan

I~ ~~o~I!~n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1993 by Westview Press Published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1993 by Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brucan, Silviu, 1916[Generatia irosita. English] The wasted generation : memoirs of the Romanian journey from capitalism to socialism and back I Silviu Brucan. p. cm. Revised and expanded version of the Romanian ed. Includes index. ISBN 0-8133-1833-5 (he) 1. Brucan, Silviu. 1916. 2. Communists-Romania-Biography. 3. Politicians-Romania-Biography. 4. Communism-Romania. 5. Romania-History-Revolution, 1989. I. Title. HX373.8.B78A3 1993 338.9498-dc20 93-20192 CIP ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29715-2 (hbk)

Contents Introduction

ix

1

What Made Him Flee

1

2

The Origins of Social Revolt

7

Father Bankrupt, 8 Fuel for Fascism, 10 My First Steps in the "Movement," 12 My Journalist Apprenticeship, 13

3

A Unique Historical Event: Conspiracy Between King and Communists

17

Patra~canu and Bodnara~, 19 In the Royal Palace Through the Back Door, 21 The Arrest of Antonescu, 22 Baron Killinger Protests, 25 10 P.M.: The King's Call to Arms, 27

4

The Stalinist Faith

31

A Newspaper as a Party Task, 34 The Soviet Fifth Column in the Party, 38 Stalin: Maker of Party Leaders, 41 Vyshinsky and the Petru Groza Cabinet, 44 People's Democracies and Cold War, 46 Purge of the Soviet Agents, 49 Sentimentalnli Chelovek, SO

s

The National Backlash

53

It All Started in Budapest, 54

When the Bear Let Its Prey Go, 55 v

Contents

vi

The Seesaw of Class Ideology and National Strategy, 57 Stalinist Desatellitization, 60 Down with Economic and Military Integration! 61 Nikita Khrushchev: Smart but Boorish, 64 Big Brother in a Fix, 67 Reminiscences About Gheorghiu-Dej, 67 My Turning Point, 72

6

The Two Faces of Communist Society

77

The Nice and Kind Face, 78 Political Segregation, 81 The Style of Party Activists, 84 The Other Face, 86

7

Red Diplomat in Washington

89

Appointed by an American Farmer, 89 Second Discovery of America, 90 My Brief Encounter with Senator McCarthy, 94 Smuggling the Platinum Catalyst Through Diplomatic Pouch, 97 8

The Illiterate Couple

101

I Knew Him Well, 101 I Knew Her Too, 105 Training Their Children with the Securitate, 106 Le Coup de Parti, 109 The Four Phases of Ceau~escu, 112 The Mini-Cultural Revolution, 114 Foreign Debt First, 115 "I Decide What Is Scientific!" 118 My Relations with Ceau~escu, 119 The Orchestrated Cult, 123 Why Did He Last That Long? 124 Why Did Communism Fail? 127 9

The Prelude of the Romanian Revolution The Abortive Military Coup, 131 The Bra~ov Riots, 134 Dissidence in the Party, 140 In Washington and London, 143 Promised Land Revisited, 144

131

Contents

vii

The Meeting with Gorbachev, 149 The Letter of Six, 153 Securitate: Ceau~escu's Praetorian Guard, 157 The Real American Spy, 163

10 The Inside Story of the Revolution

167

The Spark That Lit the Blaze, 167 Revolution on Television, 169 The National Salvation Front, 171 The Urban Guerrilla Warfare, 176 The Night of the Generals, 178 The Christmas Day Trial, 181 Whodunit of Terrorists: Who Were They? 183 The Unfinished Business of the Revolution, 184 Timi~oara:

11

The Day After ...

189

Twenty Years Until Democracy, 191 The May 1990 Election and the NSF, 192 If Not, a Head Shall Fall! 193 The Terrorists Are Still Missing, 193 Shock Therapy Does Not Work in Romania, 195 Why Center-Right? 197

Epilogue

201

Notes Chronology ofEvents International Perspectives: A Collection of Media and Policy Discussion Index and List ofProminent Romanians About the Book and Author

205 207 209 217 227

Introduction My generation in Eastern Europe was caught in the middle of two revolutions (1944 and 1989), which instead of moving history ahead pushed it backward. We thus at first made a U-turn-a tortuous one, to be sure-from underdeveloped capitalism to underdeveloped socialism, but because socialism and underdevelopment are strange bedfellows, we have since discovered we were on the wrong path and are trying now to return to where we started. The drama of that generation is what this book is about. For the first revolution at the end of World War II, which produced all the trouble, we Romanians cannot be blamed: Its scenario was written by Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin on the evening of 9 October 1944. With his unmatched cynicism, Churchill recounted in his memoirs how the crux of the discussion on "our affairs in the Balkans" was percentages of influence-as if the two were dealing with company dividends or bank assets-with the Soviet Union getting eventually 90 percent of Romania, and Great Britain 90 percent of Greece. Stalin's hard bargain must have gone like this: If you yield this much of Romania, I will grant you a little more of Greece. But one must admit that once the deal was concluded, both leaders kept their end of the bargain, although for public consumption they lodged protests filled with indignation at each act of the drama. Great Britain went so far as to accept the elimination of opposition parties in Romania and even the sacrifice of King Michael, while Moscow left its comrade General Marcos crying for ammunition and starving in the mountains of Greece. Shocking-but not for those familiar with the diplomatic history of the great powers. We in Romania, gullible dupes and faithful believers in the new Soviet Man, proclaimed with pride: We brought about the revolution and with but little help from the Red Army. In truth, we merely played to the best of our ability the roles cast for us in the Moscow scenario. With the second revolution, things were different. The Big Two-George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev-were so absorbed with their historic nuclear deal in Malta that they left us alone, and we had to handle ix

x

Introduction

matters ourselves. Perhaps this is why our December 1989 revolution broke out spontaneously, thus prompting dictator Nicolae Ceau~escu to run away. The revolution was labeled anticommunist, but this encompasses only the negation of the ancien regime and not its socioeconomic content. I submit that there is a historical perspective to apply to the December 1989 turnabout. The East is rather belatedly facing the challenge of modernization, a concept covering the changes the 1848 bourgeoisdemocratic revolution brought to Western Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, in the East we are falling back into history. Old grudges and conflicts from as far back as the Hapsburg and tsarist empires, marvelously preserved in the communist freezer, are floating to surface with the thawing of the Cold War and the lifting of the Stalinist coercion and repression. Territorial, religious, and ethnic claims long suppressed are striking back with a vengeance, while national liberation, secessions, and declarations of independence are coming first on the political agenda. And what are the goals of the revolution? There are many-the formation of nation-states, the building of a market economy, the assertion of political freedoms, the shaping of a middle class essential to the market, agrarian reform to give land to the peasants-all of them typical changes brought about by the bourgeois-democratic revolution that were either half implemented or skipped altogether in the East. Hence, its nations have to catch up with history in three various stages: the longest for the nations that emerged on the ruins of the Soviet empire, a middle stage for the Balkan nations, and the shortest for the nations that made up Mittel Europea. Each nation qualifies according to the extent to which it had implemented the tasks of modernization before the ascension of communist power. In Czechoslovakia, the precommunist regime had reached a development level almost on a par with Western Europe with regard to both political democracy and industrial capitalism. In Romania, the "monstrous coalition" of the boyars and the bourgeoisie had checked the abolition of large landed estates, keeping the majority of the population (70-80 percent) in the countryside, while political liberties were just beginning to assert themselves. Finally, in the tsarist empire, the feudal structures were predominant, while the Asiatic nations were far away from any industrial-capitalist development. That the division of Europe started long ago should not be overlooked: It was the Renaissance with its breakthroughs in the sciences and arts that marked the turning point at which Europe outdistanced all other continents. Since the Renaissance was a West European phenomenon par excellence, it was in those countries that both the early

Introduction

xi

start of the absolutist monarchy, as the maker of modern nation-states, and the bourgeois revolutions with their capitalist expansion thrust established the center of the world economic system, which the United States joined later. Such were the historical conditions that enabled the Western powers to benefit fully from the industrial revolution, to acquire vast colonial empires, and to become highly developed and rich. In Eastern Europe, in contrast, peoples and nationalities (most of them still struggling for nationhood) remained predominantly agricultural and tied to strong feudal structures well into the twentieth century. Therefore, historians of the future may well describe the October 1917 revolution in backward, peasant Russia merely as an antisystemic reaction against the dominance of the industrial West rather than as a showdown between socialism and capitalism. Because Russia and, later, Eastern Europe had to industrialize as rapidly as possible in a hostile international environment, they were faced with a challenge so formidable that it was the strategy of overcoming underdevelopment, not socialist principles, that left its mark on the social and political features of those societies. Marxism-Leninism simply provided the ideological motivation that led citizens to accept the sufferings and privations of industrialization. As it turned out, industrialization was the trap whereby the socialist nations were caught in the world economic system. And once the Western powers had entangled them in the industrial system, making them dependent on markets, world prices, and up-to-date technologies, the West began milking the East through unequal trade exchanges and growing foreign debt until communism was ruined and broke. The logical conclusion to be drawn from these events is that so long as the world capitalist system is going strong, no alternative system can grow in its womb. Indeed, one of Marx's theses still stands: "No social order disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed, and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society." 1 The truth is that the modern technological revolution, to which Western leaders effectively adapted capitalism, has given that system a boost for at least another half century or so, while the command-type planning system simply could not assimilate that revolution. Thus, underdevelopment in European terms remains the name of the game in the East. We are ten to fifteen years behind Western Europe and three or four times poorer. So here we are, having to start all over again to catch up with the West by other means.

xii

Introduction

*

* This is not a history book. It deals only with that part of history I have known and experienced personally. For many events related in this book, there are no documents in communist archives. Stalin never allowed his secretaries or interpreters to take notes or make verbatim records of his conversations with communist leaders; he was aware that was not "kosher." I tried three times in Moscow, without success, to gain access to his archives in order to check the version the Romanian leader Gheorge Gheorghiu-Dej gave me about his meetings with Stalin. One such story was extraordinary: In January 1945, Stalin had to choose between Gheorgiu-Dej and Ana Pauker and decided that the former should become the leader of the Romanian Communist Party. A noteworthy scene, worth including in an anthology of significant moments in the history of the communist movement. Nor are such documents available in our archives to which I have had access lately. Communist leaders choose to operate by leaving no trace. So I have had to rely on "oral history." With regard to Ceau~escu, most of his conversations with Western leaders were off the record, for he used to give them firsthand information about Soviet leaders and their real intentions. Actually, this was one of his main assets in gaining Western compliance and support, but he was perfectly aware that such intimate relations with "imperialists" had to remain TOP SECRET, hidden not only from the public but also from his closest associates. 2 Finally, even information about our December revolution is in short supply, and therefore there is wide public demand for the "truth." My story of the revolution is that of an insider, a witness to history. Indeed, I was in the midst of the action, and I have endeavored to recount the events as I saw and knew them. However, I was but one actor of the revolution; only a professional historian will be able to write its complete history. *

Silviu Brucan Bucharest, Romania

1

What Made Him Flee

The scene went around the world instantaneously: the Central Committee building on 21December1989, Nicolae Ceau~escu visibly perplexed by the unprecedented rumble of boos and catcalls growing and pervading the 100,000-strong crowd. The sight will remain engraved in the memory of our people as a turning point in Romanian history. One who never experienced the ritual of the huge, perfectly organized mass meetings so carefully staged during the Ceau~escu years-meetings dominated by the usual chorus of selected sycophantic slogans shouted by cheerleaders occupying all strategic positions of the enormous plaza and the tremendous applause that immediately followedcannot fully appreciate the significance of that fantastic scene and Ceau~escu's bewildered, haggard look. Who started the boos and catcalls? That question intrigued me more than anything else. I investigated the matter carefully and found out: two teenagers from a vocational school, one fourteen and the other sixteen years old. Indeed, it was such a risky and virtually irresponsible act that no mature person educated and molded by four decades of conformity and submissiveness could possibly have contemplated such behavior without some forethought or assignment. Yes, one hundred percent spontaneity! Truly, once the game started, a completely different frame of mass psychology swept over the crowd. People began to think, and one could hear chants of TI-MI-~OA-RA rhythmically spelled, cries of "Down with the murderers," and the spirited singing of "Awake, Romanian!" The demonstrators were heard on television as the cameras were showing the confusion on the balcony-Elena Ceau~escu urging her husband to say something and a burly figure in military uniform ushering him away from the balcony. In the plaza there was pandemonium. Everybody saw it and talked about it, and the whole city was elated: The revolution on television had begun. 1

2

What Made Him Flee

That same night large crowds massed around the Intercontinental Hotel on the large boulevard in front of it. The revolutionaries succeeded in erecting a strong barricade on the boulevard, but a military tank ran it over and a number of young fighters were trodden to death. Army units and Securitate special commandos fired into the crowds all night. Dozens of civilians were admitted to hospitals with gunshot wounds; scores more were shot dead. In charge were Tudor Postelnicu, head of the Interior Ministry, and General Andruta Ceau~escu, commander of the Securitate academy at Baneasa. On the morning of the next day, 22 December, General Vasile Milea was found dead, a suicide according to official reports; but some doctors maintain he was a victim of Ceau~escu's bodyguards who killed him for disobeying the order to open fire on the revolutionaries. Even now, the true circumstances of his death are still in doubt. That morning, the Palace Square was flooded with thousands and thousands of people, this time determined to finish with the tyrants. The chanting of "Awake, Romanian!" got stronger and stronger, interrupted only by shoutings of "Down with Ceau~escu," "Down with the murderer." There were plenty of troops and lots of tanks in front of the party building, but they no longer opened fire. Instead, officers and soldiers began to fraternize with the crowd. A new slogan could be heard: "The army is with us." The Ceau~escus had spent all night inside the building discussing various options with their close associates. By the next morning they had decided to leave. Why did Ceau~escu flee and where were he and Elena headed? Initially, we assumed that when the couple reached the conclusion that their cause was lost, they asked for their helicopter with the intent of making a brief stopover at their Snagov villa to gather their most precious belongings and then of flying to the Boteni military airport to escape aboard the presidential Boeing. Their predicted destination was an Arab country, presumably Libya, where they could count on their dollar deposit at Swiss banks. Our assumptions were wrong. No, Ceau~escu was not a man to accept defeat so readily. To reconstruct that extraordinary venture, therefore, I have enlisted the voice of an individual closely involved: General Gheorghe Rus, chief commander of the air force, who in the morning of 22 December was at his command post. His statement was recorded in early January 1990 when his memory of events was still fresh and before political conditions began to engender the inhibitions that later would prevent generals from making such forthright statements:

What Made Him Flee

3

By 10:45 a.m. I received orders to dispatch from the Titu unit 300 parachutists with airplanes and helicopters, ready to descend and engage in battle. I then asked, "What could they do there with the Palace Square full of people?" The answer was, "Let them come here and we will tell them what to do.'' By 11 :20 I got an order to send urgently to the Central Committee two presidential Dauphin-type helicopters and two big MI-17 helicopters to land on the roof-platform of the building.

Asked to tell who gave those orders, General Rus stated that after General Milea's death, an operative group headed by General Victor Stanculescu and his deputy, General Eftimescu, took over at the Central Committee. In other words, the initial plan was to save all the members of the Political Executive Committee from the crowds surrounding the building. Manea Manescu confirmed: "A decision was made for all of us to flee, not just the two of them. That's why he ordered four helicopters." Here, I must add that a fifth helicopter had been flying over Bucharest the whole morning to observe every significant move and report back to Ceausescu. General Rus said that around nine o'clock the helicopter's pilot reported long lines of workers marching from the industrial -platforms on the city outskirts toward the Palace Square. Ceau~escu immediately ordered the helicopter to drop leaflets over the marchers warning them not to be foiled by this latest "imperialist conspiracy." But I believe the information that the workers were coming was the decisive factor of his flight. That did it. The fact is that only the president's helicopter with his personal pilot Lt. Col. Vasile Malutan landed on the roof. Very soon the two Ceau~escus reached the roof, rushed there by General Stanculescu who helped them embark in great haste and to whom Elena then uttered a famous line: "Victora~ [a diminutive], take care of the children!" Squeezed in the helicopter were Ceau~escu's two associates, Manea Manescu and Emil Bobu, and of course the two bodyguards of the Ceau~escus. With six passengers and a full tank, the French-built helicopter was grossly overloaded and barely cleared the roof on takeoff. The other helicopters were unable to land because in the meantime, the revolutionaries in the square had forced their way into the building and an advance group had reached the top floor. The pilots thus flew back to their base. While in the air, Ceau~escu ordered Malutan to fly to Snagov, a lakeside village some forty miles northeast of Bucharest, where the Ceau~escus had built their favorite palace. Minutes later, the helicopter

4

What Made Him Flee

landed on the villa lawn. Nicolae Ceau~escu rushed to his office to use his special VIP phone linking him with all military and civilian officials throughout the country, while Elena went directly to her safe where she kept her jewels and other valuables and then to a large closet where she ordered personnel to fill three or four plastic bags with linen, blankets, bathrobes, and towels. These items were carried to the red jeep-car AR0-224 Manescu and Bobu were supposed to take. According to Bobu's statement at his trial, Nicolae Ceau~escu made call after call talking to district party secretaries in Craiova, Constanta, Slatina, and Tirgovi~te asking the same questions over and over again: "How are things in your district? Are people quiet? Have there been any demonstrations?" He finally settled on Tirgovi~te, where the report was encouraging. Both the helicopter and the ARO jeep headed in that direction after a while. Ceau~escu also ordered Malutan to establish radio contact with General Rus: "I want him to meet us somewhere with two helicopters loaded with armed guards." Rus confirms this. He told Malutan he would come, but after he realized what was happening in the Palace Square and the Central Committee building, he changed his mind. About 1:15 p.m. the helicopter with the Ceau~escus took off toward Tirgovi~te. Their last voyage in the country was an odyssey full of mishaps, turnabouts, and confusion-all of which dramatically illustrate the disarray of a man accustomed to being master of the situation, in perfect control of every lever of power. All of a sudden his systemonce organized-was breaking up and he was unable to control even his own moves. After only ten minutes in the air, Malutan shouted to Ceau~escu: "We've been spotted by radar. They could shoot us down at any moment." Ceau~escu became quite frightened and said: "Let's go down then." The helicopter landed in a field close to the road. Rat, Ceau~escu's bodyguard, his machine gun under his coat, walked out onto the freeway to stop a car. The rest of the party got out too. Then began the fantastic saga of changing cars to get the Ceau~escus from one place to another. The first, a red Dacia driven by Dr. Nicolae Deca ("I'll take you anywhere you want," the doctor said, fearing to be shot if he didn't) was rul).ning out of gasoline, and he stopped in a village called vacare~ti in front of a house where a factory worker, Nicolae Petri~or, was washing his black Dacia. Rat showed him his machine gun, Petri~or said good-bye to his wife, and they all drove off on the road to Tirgovi~te. The car stopped at a steel factory near the town, but at the factory gates they were turned away, and some bystanders recognized them and hurled stones at their car. Petri~or then drove them to the Plant Protection Center in Tirgovi~te, a sort of showcase of the

What Made Him Flee

s

era. There director Victor Seinescu invited the couple to sit in a room while he called the militia. At 2:00 p.m. the couple was taken to joint headquarters of the militia and Securitate. As was typical of the situation that fateful afternoon, the local Securitate commander could not make up his mind how to proceed. In the meantime, radio and television were signaling to the whole nation that the balance was tilting in favor of the revolution. The security officers started leaving the building, and very soon everybody was gone. The commander of the nearby regiment, housed in barracks only five hundred yards away, dispatched a squad of fifty officers to the militia building, and the Ceau~escus were taken into the army's custody. They would remain there for the next three days. According to Major Ion Secu, their mood alternated between bouts of deep, silent depression and moments of intense excitability, particularly when they heard some shooting that rekindled the hope Securitate troops would come to their rescue. Indeed, Major Ciocarlan, the regiment's chief, testified: "During the detention of the two, our barracks were attacked from the air and ground. Quite a few of our soldiers were wounded. We got phone threats about destruction of the barracks and of the town if the Ceau~escus were not set free." Clearly, Securitate forces were trying to free the two with the apparent aim of reinstalling the chief commander and of staging a military coup against the revolution with the help of loyalist generals. It was an insane plan, but history informs us of such desperate attempts of dictators driven from power. Much has been written about the behavior of the couple during those days. It was quite a comedown from their pampered and glamorous life in elegant palaces to the poor conditions of the barracks with its army beds and blankets, from the specially prepared lavish dinners elegantly served by smartly dressed butlers and waiters to the tray of army food (salami and salted cheese) brought by a malodorous soldier. "Don't give me that crap," snapped Ceau~escu while Elena noted with disgust: "This stuff is inedible." Things went from bad to worse when the defense minister, alarmed by the Securitate attacks, ordered the commander to remove the couple in a tank right in the middle of the courtyard. Nevertheless, the time was short, just three days, and an odd thought struck me during both the detention and the trial: The two behaved as though they were still in command, in power. Major Secu, a career officer, noted that whenever he entered their detention room, Ceau~escu addressed him: "Well, what's the situation? Give me your report." When Captain Dabija told Ceau~escu that they were getting Ceau~escu

6

What Made Him Flee

regular army rations as food, Elena berated him: "How dare you talk to the commander in chief like that?" At the trial Ceau~escu's bravado was impressive: "I recognize only the Great National Assembly and the representatives of the working class," he said time and again. When the prosecutor asked Elena who wrote the papers and books for her, she retorted angrily: "This is sheer insolence. I am chairwoman of the Academy of Sciences. You cannot talk to me like that!" Only when the two heard the death sentence did they break down demoralized. They at last realized that was the end. To better understand the who and why of the December explosion, we must go back to the origins of communist rule in Romania.

2

The Origins of Social Revolt

I was born and brought up in a rather well-to-do family on Berzei Street, near Matache Macelaru (the butcher) market in Bucharest. My father, a wholesale merchant who imported woolen fabrics from England, was a beneficiary of the favorable circumstances for business in the aftermath of World War I. Romania was enjoying an economic boom: New factories were springing up; luxury shops were opening, such as La Belle Jardiniere in the reputed commercial street called Lipscani (Leipzig tradesmen); and majestic mansions and palaces were being built in the fashionable Filipescu residential area and along Dacia Boulevard. Charming ladies joined the evening promenade along Calea Victoriei (Victory Road), and elegant equipages drawn by fiery steeds and carrying the early landowners (who bore Greek rather than Romanian names) occasionally encountered the first Fords, Buicks, and Alfa Romeos of the rising Romanian bourgeoisie. Quite naturally, all of them-the true-born aristocrats, the potbellied bourgeois, and the dandies of the "little Paris" who sipped cafe frappe or kaputziner in the open-air Corso cafe-were keen on suits made of English fabrics, and my father used to rub his hands in satisfaction over the profitable business that came his way. He had bought a rather stately building with a long courtyard one hundred meters long. In front of the courtyard lived the lodgers in three rented apartments, while at the back there stood a majestic house surrounded by a large garden and even a small soccer ground with two goals. I used to play ball there with the neighborhood street boys, who were admitted only to the courtyard, never into the house. Occasionally, we broke a window or two, but right across the street there was a glazier whom my mother would commission to replace the pane before my father came home for lunch and thrashed me with his belt, as it occasionally happened on Sundays when the glazier's shop was closed. 7

8

The Origins of Sodal Revolt

Like all progenies of the rising bourgeoisie, I was sent to the Evangelische Schule on Luterana Street, where Prussian discipline and equally demanding teachers held sway. If you played any pranks in the classroom, Doctor Jaeger would bring you to the blackboard in front of all the pupils and order you to bend low (Buck dich!); when he was convinced that the trousers were perfectly tight on your bottom, he would seize the thin end of a club and spank you with its thick end so harshly that you lost any wish to play the madcap again during lessons. Study indeed was serious-in German, say-and I felt the effects as soon as I stepped into the Saint Sava National College secondary school. But it was there that I first became aware of class discrimination: The top student in the class was automatically the son of the rich boyar Negroponte, the famous owner of the horses that won practically every race at the Baneasa track. Although I was the only pupil in the foreign-language class who, just to show off, answered the teacher solely in German, I never received a mark above nine, while Negroponte was invariably given a perfect ten. At that time we used to study Latin for seven years and ancient Greek for two and took in addition two modern languages, French and German. Romanian high school was indeed first-rate.

Father Bankrupt I was in the third year of high school when the 1929 crash shook the New York Stock Exchange, though I could hardly realize the gravity and proportions of the crisis that was spreading all over the capitalist world. Nor could I anticipate that it would affect even the fate of my family and spell a drastic turning point in my life. English clothes were luxuries, and the slump in the trade was abrupt and dramatic. My father's store in ~epcari Street went bankrupt, and because the old man was stubborn enough to continue business as usual, signing overdrawn checks, his bankruptcy was decreed fraudulent. It was like falling into an abyss: Literally overnight, my family was left without a penny. We had to sell the house, the piano, every piece of furniture, and even my mother's fur coat. I still remember vividly how one day I returned from school to find my mother crying bitterly as a half dozen bailiffs appraised our belongings-each piece of furniture, the china, the linen, our clothes-and then loaded them on trucks. By nightfall, we had been left almost naked, and my three sisters and I slept on the floor, using our overcoats as blankets. Mother wept throughout the night; my father did not even come home. When he eventually appeared, I hardly recognized him. This once-proud, high-flown man who carried his gold watch with a

The Origins of Social Revolt

9

fancy ornament in his vest pocket-the mark of a wholesale dealer, a member of the upper crust of the commercial class-turned out humble and emaciated, never lifting his eyes from the ground. He was virtually finished. Luckily, the man who had bought our house was anxious to move in immediately, so that he found us a small modest flat on Vlad Tepe~ Street in a courtyard that had many tenants on both sides; he also bought some secondhand sofas for us to sleep on arid gave us a few thousand lei to buy food. Obviously, he was happy with the deal he made: To acquire an enormous house for a half million lei was a genuine bargain! In ten years he could recover the investment just by renting the three flats. I heard him making these reckonings with his lawyer, and for the first time in my life I realized what a "lucky strike" meant in the world of business. It was some time before I woke up to reality and understood that I ought to acquire not only knowledge but also the ability to stand on my own feet. My father found a job with a German named Toffler, who had taken over the wholesale business in clothing and who needed an expert in the trade. The old man was definitely the best choice: He had only to feel a fabric with his fingers and he could tell immediately the wool or cotton content and the quality, and in the meantime he would be mentally calculating the right price. But the wage of a shop assistant was too small for a family of six, and we could barely make both ends meet. My sisters, two of them ready for marriage, needed many items, and there was little money left for me and certainly not for school tuition, which was rather high at that time. I began giving private lessons, and from this tutoring, I candidly admit, I learned more than my pupils. My first student was the son of a wealthy family: He had reached high school but found learning too hard and was therefore getting bad marks. In fact, he was rather dull, and his father told me to do my best simply to get him promoted. I did so and was paid a good sum of money, enough to cover the tuition and buy the books I wanted for a long time. Even more important, the rich man commended me very highly-actually advertised me-in the world of businessmen, so that the next year I was private tutor to three boys of the same ilk and thus became "a man who supported his family." Since all three pupils were very poor in Latin, I soon acquired expertise in that language. I could recite by heart whole passages from Caesar's Debello gallico, arousing the gaping admiration of my pupils. By frequenting the palaces of rich landowners and industrialists, I gained an inside view of the luxurious and glamorous life of those privileged castes. It contrasted sharply with the miserable existence of

10

The Origins of Social Revolt

those who toiled from morning until night, and the feeling of social injustice would influence me the rest of my life.

Fuel for Fascism In the late 1930s, Romania was a country of crying social inequalities. The landowners had concluded with the industrial bourgeoisie the "monstrous coalition" that enabled them to preserve their vast feudaltype estates on which hundreds of thousands of peasants toiled for next to nothing, while in towns the proletarians of the factories that mushroomed everywhere were subject to the living and working conditions of "savage capitalism." This was the background against which fascism was rising to power-a movement promoted at the grassroots level by the anti-Semitic nationalist movements and at the top level by the political quarters gradually attracted to Hitler's Germany. The fascist movement in Romania then ran along two parallel lines: the first the National Christian Defense League set up in la~i, the capital of Moldavia, by A. C. Cuza (a professor), the other the Iron Guard, a paramilitary organization set up after the Hitlerite model, whose members dressed in green shirts or sumane negre (black peasant coats). While the former had a simplistic political orientation centered almost exclusively around anti-Semitism, the Iron Guard had a sophisticated ideology that blended religious fanaticism, mysticism of ethnic values, and a cult of violence that pushed political crime to the status of eulogy-a thrust that resulted in the murders of three prime ministers and other democratic statesmen. The Iron Guard (also called legionnaires) had managed to acquire a mass basis, particularly among the youth and students, and to establish close relationships with Hitler's National Socialist Party and Mussolini's Fascist Party. Unusual business combinations typical of the interwar years in Europe were spreading to Romania too. The big American trust Standard Oil had concluded an agreement with the German I. G. Farbenindustrie for the former to defend the interests of German capital in America and the latter to ensure the safety of Standard Oil associates based in the European countries occupied by the Hitlerites. In the period 1941-1943, while the war was raging at its worst, the Romanian-American Company, owned by Standard Oil, enjoyed profits of 1.3 billion lei-obviously derived from supplies to the Wehrmacht. Oil, like money, had no odor. In foreign policy, Romania had benefited by its participation in World War I side by side with the allied powers-England and Francemanaging on 1 December 1918 to round off its frontiers as a unitary national state, and that supreme commandment continued to dictate

The Origins of Social Revolt

11

the orientation of the country's foreign policy. But with Hitler's advent to power in Germany (1933) and with the setting up of the HitlerMussolini fascist axis, Romania too started feeling the pressure of the new claimants to world domination through economic, political, and diplomatic means. Last but not least, as a neighbor of the big communist power in the East, the Soviet Union, Romania was a target of Stalin's imperialistic aims. Indeed, the interplay of the great powers' clashing interests was increasingly reflected in Romanian politics throughout the decade preceding World War II. The great diplomat Nicolae Titulescu was one of the few Romanian statesmen-perhaps the only one-to have realistically and clearsightedly perceived the knot of interimperialistic contradictions entangling Romania. He realized that given his country's geopolitical position, Britain's and France's plafonic pledges were hardly sufficient to counter Hitler's Drang nach Osten. Thus, Titulescu tried on the one hand to obtain some security guarantees from Moscow, closely working at the League of Nations with Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov, and on the other hand to set up with Romania's small neighbors regional buffer pacts such as the Little Entente. However, both efforts were insufficient in the face of Hitler's powerful trust. Under the circumstances, an increasingly important political factor became Romania's King Carol II, a monarch who blended politics and business with much talked-about love affairs. Although born into German dynasty, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, his business and political interests tied him to the Western powers dominating Europe (England and France); an important link was his investments in those countries, particularly in the British Vickers armament company. With such a zigzag of social, national, and inter-European conflicts, class analysis was irrelevant, and the ideological picture also became confused when the most popular democratic party of Romania (the National Peasant Party) concluded an electoral agreement with the pro-Hitler Iron Guard. When I joined the left-wing movement, I was only about 18 and could not fully grasp all the implications these events had at home and abroad. I was seeking a safe reference point and was attracted by the views expressed in such weeklies as Stfnga (The Left), Era Noud (New Era), and Cuvintul Liber (Free Word) that were spearheaded against fascism, the specter looming over Europe. At that age, senses and emotions are stronger than reason and calculations. In social terms I was an outcast: As the son of a man indicted for fraudulent bankruptcy, I held bad credentials for top society. Perhaps I could have risen to a high social profession had I not been Jewish; in those years, Jews were not normally allowed to attend Bucharest

12

The Origins of Social Revolt

University. A. C. Cuza's followers and the Iron Guard resorted to all sorts of pressures and threats in order to eliminate Jews from the courses. I was nevertheless content when-thanks to the help of some steadfast friends-I managed to worm my way among the students at the lectures delivered by the historian Nicolae Iorga, the philosopher Motru Radulescu, the aesthetician Tudor Vianu, and the philosopher Nae Ionescu. I never tired of listening to them and took copious notes, almost in shorthand. They were indeed first-class professors and aroused in me a thirst for learning that has pervaded my life. Out of the money I earned from private lessons, I paid a student from Manchester who had been granted a scholarship to study the history of the Romanian people to tutor me in English. He too gave lessons in order to meet expenses. The first political action I joined (1935) took place in the streets of Bucharest. In the interwar period, two popular dailies were engaged in a bitter competition; Dimineata (Morning), a democratic middle-ofthe-road newspaper, and Universul (Universe), a right-wing nationalistic one. Because the former was owned by some rich Jews (the Paukers), the owner of Universul, Stelian Popescu, unleashed an antisemitic campaign intended to eliminate his rival. In parallel to the campaign in the press, fascist hoodlums destroyed posters and burned Dimineafa in the streets. The democratic forces jumped to the defense of that citadel, while the communist and socialist youth organized pickets around newspaper stands and kiosks to counter the attacks of hooligans. I joined such a group: Each Sunday morning we used to patrol around the newspaper stands at the North Railway Station in Bucharest. When the legionnaires showed up, harsh fights broke out, and once I sustained a severe head injury. This was my debut in Romanian political life.

My First Steps in the "Movement" Although I had not yet become a party member, I spent some time in communist circles and became familiar with the lifestyle. One of the usual legal forms of activity was the "cultural evening," often held in the house of a well-to-do supporter. These get-togethers typically included a lecture on scientific or literary subjects and then a reading of short stories or poetry. At one of such events I met the writer Alexandro Sahia, a tall and lean man whose glasses framed two dreamy eyes and who dressed rather shabbily-I remember even some patches on his trousers. One of the customary guests was the Bessarabian poet Emilian Bikov, who recited revolutionary poems by Vladimir Mayakovski (Bikov had translated them into a very attractive Molda-

The Origins of Sodal Revolt

13

vian tongue) and some of his own poems that resounded like a trumpet calling to arms. The most energetic organizer of such legal forms of communist activities I knew was ~tefan Teodorescu, who came from the old Social Democratic movement. Uncle Fanica, as we called him, lived with a prosperous Jewess doctor famed as a gynecological surgeon. She owned a large mansion and was equally famous for her cooking and cakes that attracted many visitors. I met in her house a strange mixture of people: leftist intelligentsia, old socialist workers, students belonging to the Democratic Front, young apprentices brought there by union organizers in factories and workshops. From this motley society, the communists recruited those who could qualify for illegal underground activities, using various methods to screen and test potential participants. Uncle Fanica asked me first whether I wanted to read Marxist literature, warning me that I must keep the fact secret and read only when I was alone. He gave me two books in French: Le deuxieme jour de la creation by Ilya Ehrenburg and Les Etats-Des-Unis by Vladimir Pozner. When I had successfully passed the first examination, he asked whether I was prepared to hide some illegal party documents at home. I accepted and got a report of the communist leaders who had attended a recent meeting of the Comintern in Prague. For such a purpose, they used to collect money at the cultural evenings in order to cover the cost of transportation and to bribe state functionaries for passports. Since I was already a trusted supporter, they told me that the train ticket back to Bucharest was paid for by the Comintern, and that one of our party delegates, Alexandro Buican, was given a large sum of French francs to subsidize party activities in Romania. At that time I considered it quite natural that Romanian communists received financial support from the Comintern. After all, the party was a form of proletarian internationalism, and I did not yet realize that Comintern = the Soviet Communist Party =Stalin. My Journalist Apprenticeship

My apprenticeship as a journalist began at Ceadru's evening paper Gazeta. I wrote a fashionable social column that enabled me to become familiar with the nightlife of Bucharest, whidt was lively and vibrant at the time. I also became a proofreader for the cultural weekly Adevarul Literar (Literary Truth) in whose editorial office I worked closely with the writer Mihail Sevastos and the poet Alexandro Philipide. When the managing editor of Gazeta went on leave or to report from the provinces, Ceaciru would entrust the job to me, and that was

14

The Origins of Sodal Revolt

how I learned the technical skills of the job. He was the thriftiest boss I ever met. When he noticed how eager I was to learn the business, he stopped paying me a salary. Yet I was happy to write and publish and did not care about his money. At a nightclub, I got to know Aurel Alicu, a leader of the National Peasant Youth in Transylvania. He was intrepid and clever at business, but he also harbored political ambitions. He gravitated around Mihai Popovici, the former minister of finance in the National Peasant cabinet, who was also the party treasurer and thus controlled substantial funds. I persuaded Alicu to launch a weekly for the youth-I called it Dacia Noud (New Dacia)-and promised to write articles for him to sign, an idea he found attractive. No sooner said than done. We rented offices in a building on Calea Victoriei, and the first issue came out in 1937. By then the Romanian communists, faithfully and obediently applying Stalin's directives, had switched to the strategy of the Popular Anti-Fascist Front and changed the spearhead of the attack: The artillery previously directed against Britain and France for refusing to collaborate with the USSR was shifted against Hitler's Germany. Therefore, the communists had adopted a platform of forming a broad coalition with all democratic forces to oppose the advent of fascism in Romania. Alicu had a friend, a National Liberal member and a student, Amedeu Badescu, and we co-opted him for the Dacia Noud which now included members of the National Peasant and National Liberal parties. I recruited a few leaders of the Democratic Students' FrontMiron Constantinescu, Corneliu Manescu, Roman Moldovan (all of them communists)-and my good friend, film director Victor Iliu, with whom I shared a room in the Cotroceni neighborhood. The weekly appeared for almost a year, until it was suppressed by the rightwing nationalistic government of Octavian Goga and A. C. Cuza. My superior connection in the Communist Party of Romania was ~tefan Fori~, propaganda secretary of the Central Committee, a typical apparatchik, rigid and hard-headed. Although the party platform required collaboration with the democratic parties, Fori~ had difficulty understanding how I could work so well with National Peasant and National Liberal intellectuals; he would eye me with mistrust when I assured him that in my capacity as managing editor I could decide on the contents of each issue. That proved to be the case: Alicu was so delighted with the articles I wrote and published under his signature that he gave me an entirely free hand in editorial matters. But in autumn 1938 I was conscripted. Because I already had a record of participating in subversive activities, I was penalized to do mili-

The Origins of Social Revolt

15

tary service with the frontier guards for three years. After a brief training at Cernavoda, I was sent to a station on the Bulgarian border. There I became acquainted both with the Bulgarian komitadjis (extremists) who systematically attacked the Romanian colonists brought over from Transylvania, and with the smugglers from the Middle East who crossed the border at night loaded with hashish or opium. Eventually, I was discharged at the end of 1940, when a new page opened up in my life. Very soon, in June 1941, Romania attacked the Soviet Union as an ally of Hitler-a traumatic event that had an indelible effect on my life. But first I must tell the story of 23 August 1944, which is an adventure in itself.

3

A Unique Historical Event: Conspiracy Between King and Communists

By far the most novel historical act of the first Romanian revolution was the 23 August 1944 insurrection. Most Western historians are inclined to accept the Yalta theory to the effect that the fate of the East European countries was decided by the Big Three-Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin-at their summit on 11February1945. In fact, as I have already indicated, the arrangement concerning Romania was concluded earlier in Moscow by Churchill and Stalin. In Yalta, the Big Three did not pursue such details because the issue on the agenda was the globe itself-namely the post-World War II world order, including of course the Far East. Yet it is a historical fact that six months before Yalta, Romania experienced an extraordinary coup d'etat in which the Romanian army turned against its yesterday ally, Hitlerite Germany. The reversal caused the entire German thrust in the Balkans to founder and considerably shortened World War II. When the Red Army entered Bucharest, Romania's capital had already been freed from the Germans, the fascist leaders had been arrested, and the new Romanian authorities were in full control of the situation. That was the result of a conspiracy without a precedent in history and-one may venture to assert-without a prospect of ever being repeated. So far there is no report on the events of 23 August 1944 in keeping with the rules of historical science, because under the communist system the historian's work is subject to the political injunctions of the powers that be, while the events and more particularly the persons involved are described in accordance with conjunctural interests of 17

18

A Unique Historical Event

those holding power. For example, the story goes that after the twentieth congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev exposed Stalin's outrages and crimes, a meeting was convened in Leningrad of the old bolsheviks to attend the reading of the revised history of the party and the 1917 revolution. A wild riot broke out in the hall because the attendees could barely recognize any of the events in which they had participated. Likewise, Leonid Brezhnev tried in the 1970s to present himself as the providential man of the Stalingrad battle, although he had been sent there only to oversee the supply of meat to the besieged troops. In Romania, the history of 23 August 1944 could not be written because King Michael, the main actor of the coup, was subsequently forced to abdicate and to leave the country, the role of the traditional parties had to be described in the negative, while Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the head of the Communist Party of Romania, played no role in the preparation of that historic act. Later, under Ceau~escu's rule, the label attached to 23 August 1944 surprisingly switched from "the national antifascist armed insurrection" to "the revolution for social and national liberation." The revision was formulated with the boundless audacity that only Ceau~escu's total ignorance could entail: Indeed, what kind of social revolution was it that allowed King Michael of Hohenzollern to remain on the throne and that empowered as prime ministers of the first two cabinets after 23 August 1944 none other than bourgeois generals, Constantin Sanatescu and Nicolae Radescu? Instructions given on the eve of 23August1989 required the mass media to issue festive articles and editorials mentioning the participation of Nicolae and Elena Ceau~escu in the insurrection, although in 1944 not even party members knew those two names. In 1983, when Constantin Enache, propaganda secretary of the Central Committee, asked me to write an encomium of the dictator (in the process making attractive promises, such as a permanent passport), he handed me an outline marked "Emphasize Comrade Ceau~escu's role in the action on 23August1944." This is why I propose here to undertake only a historical account limited to the two protagonists of the coup on 23 August 1944 and based on documents and testimony and on data and facts I know personally. In the autumn of 1943, I was in charge of the underground press, primarily Scfnteia (The Spark), and had given up all other activities in which I had been involved until then. Among other things, I had joined two secret meetings for the training of the "patriotic guards" organized by the communists. The instructor bore the code name "Engineer Ceau~u." When I set eyes on him, I was bewildered, even frightened: He was dressed in the uniform of a German major. Later, I was

A Unique Historical Event

19

told he was the communist leader Emil Bodnara§. A career officer himself, he had the credible appearance of a German officer, and he spoke German flawlessly; the Gestapo could only become suspicious because he impersonated the character too perfectly. Therefore, I was made privy to all the preparations for the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship both by Lucretiu Patra§canu (who was already involved in the publication of the newspaper Romania Libera) and by Emil Bodnara§, who was the mastermind of the military conspiracy. For that purpose I was given a Beretta revolver, which I treasured for many years after. The story is absolutely amazing and I was the first to be amazed. Imagine a king plotting with communists. Fantastic and incredible! Pitr~canu and Bodnir~

Even the two communist leaders involved in the conspiracy seemed unbelievable. Lucretiu Patra§canu was a refined intellectual, who grew up in the house of a great scholar and man of letters, D. D. Patra§canu. The son was a tall man, with a domed forehead, penetrating eyes, and bushy eyebrows-features that also brought him the favor of ladies of Romanian high society, who were equally attracted by the mystery surrounding him. He impressed people upon first contact by his authoritative tone, softened only by his waggish Moldavian accent and the voice he skillfully modulated in harmony with each situation. He was a lonely fighter who had never accepted the discipline of a party cell, his comrades thus eyed him suspiciously as being the opposite of the collectivist type. Fully aware of his intellectual superiority, Patra§canu appeared arrogant until the time came to foster the kind of communication typical of relations between underground militants. Then he would become warm and sensitive, imbued with the desire to establish direct communication with comrades of worker origin-provided they were intelligent. If they were slow-witted, Patra§canu despised them without trying to conceal his feelings. He was convinced he ought to become the leader of the party, and because he would freely confess that desire over a glass of wine, it was not hard for Gheorghiu-Dej to learn of his ambition. (That was the beginning of the conflict between the two; the end came with the tragic denouement for Patra§canu of execution in 1954-the monstrous crime perpetrated by Gheorghiu-Dej in cold blood.) Nevertheless, Patra~canu's family and intellectual background enabled him to establish personal communication both with King Michael and with politicians of such stature as Iuliu Maniu, Dinu Bratianu, and Constantin Titel Petrescu, and he enjoyed their respect although he was a communist.

20

A Unique Historical Event

Emil Bodnara~ too was an intellectual, versed in both German and Russian culture, and he spoke both languages fluently. Yet his military training got the upper hand. His uprightness even when he was sitting in an armchair, his harsh tone that of a man accustomed to giving orders, his bristling brush of hair and his stern eyes, and his irreproachable standing even when he was in civilian garb-all these immediately conveyed the aura of an officer. A mysterious and enigmatic figure, he graduated at the top of his class in a military school in Timi~oara with an officer's commission, but he suddenly deserted and disappeared without a trace over the Soviet border. Apparently, he was there enrolled in an espionage training school, and he returned to Romania with a well-kept secret mission in 1935. He was caught and sentenced for desertion and for being "suspected of espionage" and spent many years in Doftana prison where he met Gheorghiu-Dej. Freed in 1943, he started his underground work. Bodnara~ impressed King Michael's generals through his military competence, orderly thoughts, and strategic plans. Moreover, he possessed something uncommon in that milieu, namely a special familiarity with the mentality and behavior of both German and Russian generals, which enabled him to anticipate their reaction to the Romanian insurrection. His German and Russian cultural background provided the insight that conferred on the military plans for the August 1944 insurrection the certainty absolutely indispensable to an action so risky and dangerous. I have wondered what would have happened had Bodnara~ and Patra~canu not existed. I have known several communist leaders fairly well and can assert that none of them could possibly have replaced either of the two. They were unique. Did history make them, or did they make history? Bodnara~ and Patra~canu first met with King Michael's representatives the night of 13-14June 1944 in a secret communist house at 103 Calea Mo~ilor in Bucharest. The participants were General Gheorghe Mihail (the former chief of the general staff fired by Ion Antonescu but appointed by King Michael commander of the military insurrection), General Constantin Sanatescu (head of the Royal Military House), Colonel Dumitru Damaceanu (chief of staff of the Bucharest High Command), and the king's representatives: Baron Ion Mocsony-Stircea, marshal of the palace; Mircea loanitiu, private secretary; and Grigore Niculescu-Buze~ti, diplomatic adviser. The discussion focused on the so-called Gigurtu plan (for Ion Gigurtu, a former prime minister) presented by the king's men. The party delegates subjected it to an earnest and thorough analysis, concluding that it was unrealistic and even hazardous.

A Unique Historical Event

21

At a party meeting I attended in late June, an emissary from Emil explained to us the proposed plan: The king would meet with Germany's minister to Bucharest, Baron Manfred von Killinger, to discuss replacing Marshal Antonescu by a Gigurtu cabinet that, once in power, would prepare for Romania to abandon the anti-Soviet war and join the Allies. The plan was both naive and dangerous-naive because at that moment Hitler would hardly have abandoned Antonescu, whom he fully trusted, and dangerous because it would have called the Gestapo's attention to the fact that a coup was being staged by the royal palace, which would only have sharpened the vigilance of the German military and espionage bodies. The effect would have been the suppression of the plotters at the royal court. The party delegates submitted their own plan: Bodnara~

1. The commander in chief (King Michael) would order the army to turn weapons against our genuine enemy: Hitler's Germany. 2. Ion Antonescu would be summoned to the palace, and the king would order him to conclude an armistice with the Allied powers and to break with Germany. If he refused, Antonescu would be arrested on the spot. 3. A military committee would be organized to prepare thoroughly for the military coup and the defense against the predictable German reaction. 4. "Patriotic guards" would be trained and armed for purposes of supporting the regular troops and defending enterprises from German destruction. 5. A coalition cabinet of the National Democratic Bloc (the National Peasant Party, the National Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Romanian Communist Party) would be set up that would proclaim an end to the alliance with Germany and Romania's decision to join the Allies with its entire military potential. Obviously, the plan was daring, yet on closer analysis it appeared correct politically and realistic militarily. Gradually, the proposal was accepted both by the generals involved and by the royal advisers, who eventually convinced King Michael too that it was the best solution under the circumstances.

In the Royal Palace Through the Back Door Everything took place in the utmost secrecy. For instance, a court document not published until August 1990 was the register of audiences

22

A Unique Historical Event

with King Michael, which was usually kept by the royal aide on duty; recorded in it on Tuesday, 22August1944, at 10 p.m., was the audience of Lucretiu Patra~canu together with three generals, Constantin Sanatescu, Gheorghe Anton, and Constantin Aldea, Colonel Dumitru Damaceanu, Baron Ion Mocsony-Stircea, and royal aide Constantin Udrinschi. 1 It was the meeting in which details were finalized for the action to be undertaken the next day: the invitation of Antonescu to the palace and his arrest, the king's proclamation, and the decree-laws on setting up the Sanatescu cabinet, the amnesty, and the first stage of the military plan. Patra~canu related these events for a newspaper after the coup: The ticklish question was how to enter the royal palace, escaping not only the outside guard but also the possible spies of the Gestapo and of the secret police within the palace itself. I had to foil a twofold vigilance. By using a palace car with a highly reliable chauffeur, I crossed through the first two guards, remaining in a court outside the main rooms. All this was happening late at night. From that place, through entrances hardly ever used and a whole number of corridors and rooms where I met nobody, I was steered into the room where the meeting was to be held: the king's private apartment, in the very heart of the palace. The whole building seemed plunged into sleep. All the halls and rooms I had crossed had been in complete darkness. Our former meetings usually lasted up to three or four in the morning. Yet I used to leave the palace before the crack of dawn, with the same measures of precaution as on entering. My presence in the palace remained unknown until after 23 August 1944.2

The Arrest of Antonescu The afternoon of 23 August unfolded like a detective film of high suspense. Eyewitnesses related how at about 4:00 p.m. Marshal ("leader") Antonescu's motorcade entered the main palace gate; there were three cars with the armored Mercedes in the middle, from which the marshal stepped down. He was in high dudgeon, repeatedly hitting his topboots with his cavalryman's horsewhip. Whenever he came to the palace he was seized with fury, for the king was the only person in Romania who, under the Constitution, was placed above him, a live symbol of defiance of Antonescu's authority as the "leader." He was introduced into the "yellow salon," where King Michael, General Sanatescu, and Mihai Antonescu were present. Following the scene from behind a heavy curtain, in the "king's study," were Baron Mocsony-Stircea, Grigore Niculescu-Buze~ti, General Aldea, and royal secretary Mircea Ioanitiu. Each of them had a loaded pistol in his

A Unique Historical Event

23

pocket to meet any contingency, although they knew that a group of soldiers commanded by Major Anton Dumitrescu, assisted by Sergeant Major Dumitru Bala, were waiting to be summoned to put the two Antonescus under arrest. Half smothered by emotion, the king asked the marshal to sit down and at great difficulty managed to say: "I have learned that the Russians have broken through our front. I wish to know what measures you intend to take." 3 The marshal started explaining the situation, admitting that enemy forces had advanced but stating that they would be stopped within days. Yet the king very well knew his score, which he had rehearsed dozens of times. He spoke in an obviously emphatic tone: "The situation is highly critical and I believe you ought to ask for an armistice." Now the marshal was downright irritated; it was the first time the king had addressed him in such a tone. He fretted in his chair, a vein started throbbing visibly by his temple, blood suffused his cheeks (that was the origin of his nickname "the Red Mastiff"), and he retorted angrily: "I will demand an armistice when I think it fit and under certain conditions." The king said: "It is too late for us to start bargaining." Trying to keep himself under control, Antonescu answered: "I want some guarantees, and if I fail to obtain them, I will continue to fight alongside the German troops." Those words caused King Michael to become more resolute: "Your solutions are not acceptable. You have to plead for an armistice." That was much too much. The marshal burst out: "I know how to choose the moment myself. I need no teaching." At this point, King Michael had his speech up his sleeve: "If you fail to accept, it would be but right to resign." "I won't resign," the marshal cried, his face burning. And he added the now famous sentence: "You can hardly suppose I will surrender the country to the rule of a child." Now it was the king's turn to lose patience. But this situation too had been foreseen in the scenario. He excused himself and went for a glass of mineral water in his study, where he saw his close associates. They encouraged him to deal the final blow. The king returned to the yellow salon and said: "I regret you refuse to do what I am asking you to." The marshal retorted abruptly: "I won't change my plans. I will continue the war." The moment had come for the long-prepared blow: "In this case, Marshal Antonescu, I see myself obliged to take into account my peo-

24

A Unique Historical Event

ple's will, voiced through the four democratic parties, and to take measures of immediately wresting the country out of the war, for saving it from disaster. For this purpose, I have resolved to ask you to conclude the truce this very day, and if you refuse, I order you to resign right now!" Quivering with wrath, Antonescu replied energetically: "I take orders from nobody. I am the person who issues orders, not who receives them." "If such is your answer, then you are dismissed." King Michael uttered the magic words. 4 At that moment, Major Dumitrescu's group of soldiers entered the salon and put the two Antonescus under arrest. Sergeant Major Balli marshaled them to a vault in the king's bedroom, into which they were pushed forcibly. Balli locked the door behind them and turned the six knobs of the cipher. Eventually they were under lock and key. The rest of the scenario unfolded rapidly. The next move was to record the king's proclamation to the Romania people and his order of the day to the army. In keeping with the understanding, the proclamation had been drawn up by Lucretiu Patra~canu in lawyer Torosian's secret house in Armeneasca Street. Patra~canu related the story: The text I had prepared had been accepted fully. The moment I embarked upon the final editing of the proclamation, British bombers were announced approaching Bucharest. They soon appeared in the sky. Since I was pursued by the Gestapo as well as by the Romanian secret police, I could not go to air-raid shelters either in daytime or at night, so I was forced to remain in the room where I happened to be. This time again I stayed in the flat, continuing to work on the proclamation in a hidden closet from which no ray of light could be seen outside. But the roar of the bombers kept drawing nearer. Suddenly bombs started falling within hundreds of meters-in Vasile Lascar Street and even in Negustori Street, close by. We all remembered the "carpet of bombs." We stopped working for a moment. But we continued as if nothing had happened. The proclamation was ready when the sirens announced the end of the alarm. 5

A polytechnical student, a member of the Communist Youth, had been selected to make the recording. When he was told that a royal aide-de-camp would come to drive him to the palace, he was dumbfounded: "The world is upside down, really! Just think of an activist of the Communist Party having to record the king!" At the appointed time his doorbell rang. The student had not yet managed to set his recording machine in order when he saw a slender

A Unique Historical Event

25

and elegant man with his hair neatly combed back. The tortoise-shell rims of his glasses emphasized his aristocratic countenance. We have the story from royal aide-de-camp Ion G. Balaceanu: I invited him to join me in the car. The recording machine, slightly larger than a record gramophone, looked rather like a recruit's case than like a technical apparatus .... And because he was very self-conscious, I tried to give him courage, to explain that there was no reason to worry, that nobody would stop us from entering the palace and that afterward I would take him out. ... He was listening to me while repeatedly wetting his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. We entered the palace through the gate of the garages. The sentinels on duty knew my car and immediately opened the gate for me .... I thought the student would lose himself altogether, but I was wrong. He addressed the sovereign with the traditional formula, and Michael gave him his hand .... The king sat down at his desk, in· front of the microphone, and when the young student signaled to him, he started reading. The technician had turned to stone close to his recording machine, watching the rotations of the disc. Less intent on the functioning of the apparatus, I was listening to the proclamation. I heard the text for the first time .... After the last words, the student stopped the machine and asked me to listen to the recording with him. We did. It would not do because of the king's faulty diction. I suggested he make a new recording. King Michael agreed and did his best to read the proclamation more clearly than the first time. He managed better. 6

Baron Killinger Protests Everything had unfolded in keeping with the plan. But suddenly there was a thunderbolt: Germany's minister in Bucharest, Baron Manfred von Killinger, applied for an urgent audience with the king. He had been informed about the afternoon events at the palace by Eugen Cristescu, the head of the Romanian secret services, but even the latter did not know for certain how things had happened, nor did he have any idea about the complete plan for the insurrection. News of the events had reached the baron at his villa (twenty kilometers from Bucharest); with him was his secretary, Hella Petersen, a young blonde of military deportment who had gone through the Gestapo schools and the beds of her superiors. Small and stout, the baron had turned deadly pale when he received the unexpected news on the telephone. Fully possessed of her self-control as a Gestapo officer, Hella had taken the steering wheel of the Mercedes and driven at top speed to get him to the German legation around 7:30 p.m. The baron had swiftly changed into his diplomatic uniform with the two-cornered hat, then ordered

26

A Unique Historical Event

his chauffeur to rush to the palace. There, the officer on duty motioned him to pull up at the side entrance. That was a bad omen: It was the first time the baron had not been received at the grand entrance. From the narratives of the eyewitnesses (General Sanatescu, the new prime minister, Grigore Niculescu-Buze~ti, the new foreign minister, and Baron Mocsony-Stircea, marshal of the royal court), we can easily get the picture of that dramatic meeting. Speaking German, Killinger adopted a threatening tone: "On the Fuhrer's behalf and on his personal orders, I wish to advise Your Majesty of his deep concern over the fate of Marshal Antonescu, the leader of the Romanian state, who today at 6 p.m. was due to leave for the front but was summoned to the palace and put under arrest-so say the reports having reached the Fuhrer. Consequently, Germany's Fuhrer requires His Majesty to answer immediately: What is the reason, the purport, and the position of the ministers present here, and where is detained his personal friend, Marshal Antonescu?" King Michael was very tense, yet he held himself erect, his head high. He had his answer well prepared and rehearsed: "Ion and Mihai Antonescu called on me. They insisted on drawing my attention to the fact that the situation was extremely difficult and that they saw no other way out than to tender their resignations in order to retire to private life." Hardly able to conceal his fury, Baron von Killinger said authoritatively: "I am asking you: Where is Marshal Antonescu?" "I've accepted his resignation and set up a new cabinet," was the king's premeditated answer. Killinger exploded: "I am asking you again: Where is the marshal?" "Ion and Mihai Antonescu manifested their intention to spend the rest of their lives at Predeal." Hot and flushed, Killinger said ominously: "This chapter is far from closed. You will have to face the consequences. I am absolutely convinced that the marshal has not left the palace." A few moments went by in painful silence, then Grigore NiculescuBuze~ti insisted on describing to the German minister the new political situation arising out of the resignation of the Antonescu government and the setting up of the new cabinet chaired by General Sanatescu with the support of the four political parties in the National Democratic Bloc. For the first time Killinger became aware of the entire political dimension of the problem, and his professional experience led him to ask: "And what are the intentions of the new cabinet?" "Probably an armistice with Russia," the king answered dryly.

A Unique Historical Event

27

"But this is sheer treason!" Killinger shouted. "You are indulging in a dangerous game. You shall be crushed within days." "From now on this is our own concern," the king pointed out, and continued: "I see myself obliged to ask you to evaluate the new situation and immediately to withdraw your forces from Romania, in an orderly way and without bloodshed." That theme was very dear to King Michael, although both Patra~canu and Bodnara~ had warned him that the Germans would hardly give themselves up and would react violently. Indeed, Killinger roared furiously: "On behalf of the Fuhrer and of the German government, I protest most categorically against the alliance being broken by a government we do not recognize and whose declaration we reject!" It was Niculescu-Buze~ti's turn to put in: "Your Excellency, Romania's royal government refrains from taking note of your personal protest, as devoid of any value. You are accredited with His Majesty King Michael, not with Marshal Antonescu's former cabinet, and you have absolutely no right to exceed your powers by anticipating the German government's attitude." In order to put an end to the audience, the king recovered his selfpossession and concluded: "As a Hohenzollern, I cannot but regret the evolution of events and I ask the government of the German Reich to take advantage of the conditions I am offering in order to withdraw the German troops from Romania without delay, without violence, and in perfect order. " 7 That was the prelude to the bloody clashes that were to follow in the next few days as the German command, on Hitler's orders, reacted violently against the Romanian army. But the Romanian Military Committee was prepared for the confrontation.

10 P.M.: The King's Call to Arms That very night, King Michael signed the two decree-laws drawn up by Lucretiu Patra~canu, who had arrived at the palace together with Social Democratic leader Constantin Titel Petrescu. The two laws were the General Political Military and Agrarian Amnesty and the Abolition of the Internment Camps. At 10 p.m. the radio stations broadcast the royal proclamation that electrified the entire Romanian nation by announcing a historic decision: the abandonment of Romania's alliance with the Axis powers.and the immediate cessation of the war against the United Nations. The Moor had done his duty; the Moor could go. Together with his family, King Michael drove to his villa at Valea Seaca, in Dobrita village.

28

A Unique Historical Event

The last act of the understanding between the palace and the Communist Party was to take over Marshal Antonescu and the other members of the government arrested in the palace and to remove them to a secret party house, long before prepared for the purpose, in the Vatra Luminoasa district of Bucharest. Soon after the king and his retinue left the palace, the major in charge and the royal guards battalion received orders to take the two civilians who were wearing tricolor armbands and waiting on the palace stairs to the vault where the Antonescus were detained. The two were "Engineer Ceau~u" (Emil Bodnara~) and ~tefan Mladin, the head of the patriotic guards assigned the mission of taking over and guarding Ion and Mihai Antonescu. In front of the vault stood a sergeant, who silently approached the hidden door, turned the cipher knobs, and opened wide the door. The two prisoners instinctively stood up, amazed at the unexpected appearance of the civilians with armbands and automatic guns. Bodnara~ said: "Take up your things and follow us." Ion Antonescu's eyes were arrested by Mladin's weapon. He asked: "Are you taking us to the execution place?" "No, we are not," Bodnara~ answered. "First you have to be tried by the people." The two Antonescus left the vault and followed Mladin; Bodnara~ took up the rear. A minibus was waiting in front of the stairs. The two prisoners passed along the corridor formed by the seven fighters of the patriotic guards and got into the vehicle. Generals C. Pantazi and Picky Vasiliu, together with Colonel S. Elefterescu, the prefect of Bucharest, were already there. Seeing them, Antonescu better realized the proportions of the coup. The minibus followed the Fiat car in which drove Emil Bodnara~. They crossed the blacked-out streets of Bucharest up to the villa at the other end of the city. Thus was played the last act of the conspirational scenario drawn up by King Michael and the Communist Party of Romania: one hundred percent successful! The complicity remains unique in history: Two sworn class enemies, from opposite poles of Romanian society, agreed not only on a joint plan for political and military insurrection but also on the need to work together in secrecy-an extraordinary response that required the highest degree of mutual confidence and the assumption on each side that the other was honest and reliable. The two sides could not have been more dissimilar: On the one hand were the communist politicians who systematically denounced the monarchy as the most retrograde institution and Romania's kings as the biggest landowners and exploiters of the people, the main pillars of the bourgeois-landlord re-

A Unique Historical Event

29

gime. On the other hand were the king and his courtiers who viewed the communists as dangerous extremists intent on wrecking the state order, overthrowing capitalism, and setting up a brutal and bloody dictatorship allied with and subservient to Moscow. Yet the two sides passed over their ideological prejudices and even the resentments of class hatred in order to join forces against what they perceived at the moment to be their common enemy: Hitler's Germany. In fact, Romania reflected on a national plane the great coalition among the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union that led to the crushing of Hitlerism. In Romania there was nevertheless something more. Roosevelt and Churchill operated at the international level and conceived of the coalition with the great communist power as a momentary alliance among states, one dictated by circumstances and having no implications at home-where the two antagonistic systems preserved all their characteristics and prerogatives. In Romania, in contrast, the king's conspiracy with the communists applied on the internal plane and had obvious ramifications for the social order in the country. The Communist Party became part and parcel of an internal political bloc meant to share in the adoption of national political decisions, and the party therefore was a significant factor in Romania's power structure. This was an entirely different thing and went much deeper than the anti-Hitler coalition. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill conceived of the alliance with Stalin as being a political pact that could in some way affect the status of the American or British communist parties or influence the capitalist social order in their countries. In Romania, therefore, a political action of a completely different kind was involved. Of course, this was precisely where its transitoriness lay-as will be seen, it could hardly outlast the war. The king-communist conspiracy was the political product of the anti-Hitler war and no more than that. It was dictated by the realistic and lucid appraisal of Romania's specific conditions: First, the proximity to the Soviet Union was uncomfortably close. Second, the Red Army's penetration of Romanian territory threatened Bucharest. Third, if Romania remained Hitler's ally and invaded the Soviet Union down to Stalingrad, the Red Army would be rough in Romania and all responsible institutions, including the monarchy, would be doomed. It was essential to avoid such a fatal denouement, but the traditional political forces knew that attempts to conclude understandings with the United States and Great Britain through Ankara or Cairo were totally irrelevant. There was only one way open: negotiate directly with the Soviet government-with Stalin. And in order to make such a political or diplomatic approach credible and efficient, one needed a

30

A Unique Historical Event

valid interlocutor-the Communist Party in Romania of course-although also needed was King Michael because as supreme commander of the armed forces, he controlled the only institution that could lend efficiency to the plan for overthrowing the fascist dictatorship and turning arms against Germany. And that is how this "pact with the devil" was concluded.

4

The Stalinist Faith

During World War II (I was in my midtwenties), I lived in the attic of a very quiet house in a dead-end street in the Cotroceni residential district. Not a soul appeared in that street after sundown. I was sole master of the attic, for though there was a second room-a servant's room-along the corridor, it was vacant because the first-floor tenant could no longer afford to keep a maid and had fired her. At the end of the corridor was a vast garret with any number of old things and of dark nooks covered with cobwebs, where I could hide materials and even banned books. When I was arrested in 1943, the secret police found nothing that could incriminate me, except Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks and Andre Gide's Nourritures te"estres, which of course they confiscated. My arrest was altogether accidental. ~tefan Gu~e, the legendary agent who had an extraordinary visual memory, had recognized me in Buze~ti Street as I was coming out of the Marna Cinema. Mihai Popescu, known as Milea, had been arrested earlier, and a photo found at his home showed me among several comrades at the birthday party of a marriageable young woman. However, the police knew nothing about my activities, and at her address, which I gave them, they found two quiet, fairly well-to-do pensioners who wanted to see their daughter married. Nevertheless, Gheorghe Vasilache, the police superintendent, who had put the fear of god into the communists, made me pass his test of intimidation. After yelling at me for all he was worth, threatening that my bones would be left to rot in the police cellars, he summoned a big fellow named Dobre, a jumbo boxer who was supposed to punch my face. When he was about to strike, I instinctively raised my left arm with the elbow upward, so that his hand slipped over my head. At that Vasilache exclaimed: "By George! That one knows jujitsu!" I could not help myself and broke out laughing-a hysterical laughter I couldn't stop. That must have disarmed Vasilache, who 31

32

The Stalinist Faith

probably thought that someone who laughed at an inquiry could not be a communist. He consequently passed me on to Reinhard, the "intellectual superintendent" who had attended a psychology course in Germany and therefore resorted to different means. He invited me to a plushy armchair and offered me a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy; he had noticed I was very well dressed, as required by my special work. In fact, he wanted to recruit me as their agent. I immediately asked him how much he offered to pay me. To his response of 2,000 lei a month I answered: "Superintendent, I am earning ten times that amount monthly! I couldn't care less about your 2,000." Reinhard, too, was disarmed, and after two nights spent in jail I was released. But my comrades did not contact me until two months later; mine was a singular case and such a rapid release was considered "suspect"-they had to do some checking. Actually, a "press worker"-as the person who wrote and printed underground party publications was called in the movement-took second place in the hierarchy of highly dangerous work, next to the procurement of weapons. For a press worker caught by the fascist security department or the Gestapo, what followed was not a fair trial or confinement but first only a quick inquiry to find the hideouts, the comrades in the same cell, and the printing machine used, after which came the firing squad and a shot. Period. And yet, quite strangely, in that almost complete solitude I was happy. Thank heaven there is no precise definition of happiness, because the whole thing would be spoiled if there was one. I led a hermit's life, avoiding my family and relatives so as not to imperil them and being avoided by friends and acquaintances who suspected what the nature of my work was. My only links with society were the three youths I was tutoring, but only one of them was interesting. Nevertheless, no other period of my life do I remember with so much pleasure and pride, although I have held important posts that gave me much satisfaction, sometimes even personal success. There are people who remember with great joy moments in their childhood. Not I. At times of failure, or when going through hard trials, I always piece together the war years. It is like a tonic that enables me to get back on my feet. Very strange indeed! Those were difficult years for our people, considering the shortages, privations, and risks inherent in wartime. A leaden sky was looming over our lives. Especially hard were the shame and dishonor of being the allies of Hitler, who had subdued Europe, subjecting it to the most odious barbarism by the force of arms and the ideology of crime. Years of darkness more horrible than the Middle Ages were opening for Europe. And yet I was happy! Yes, I was happy

The Stalinist Faith

33

because I felt I was doing what my conscience dictated me to do. As Shakespeare's line so well puts it: This above all to thine own self be true. At the time, I met my higher party link only once a month and consequently acted more or less independently, making the critical decisions concerning my work and that of my subordinates. As a man of action, I became a Stalinist. Here I must point out that Stalinism was not only a political and ideological phenomenon; its psychological facet was equally important. Originally, conditions in the Soviet Union-the harsh political climate of the civil war and foreign intervention, the traumatic years of war communism and capitalism encirclement-established in the Bolshevik Party the tradition of martial defiance and heroism in the face of formidable odds. Later, the ever present threat of imperialist aggression that became increasingly apparent with Hitler's advent to power generated in the party a propensity for a willful and energetic course of action in which the end became more important than the means. That Stalinist spirit became perfectly grafted on the harsh political terrain of Romania's illegal and underground activities, thus shaping the spirit of an entire generation of communist leaders and activists. I liked the priority given to efficiency in judging political action. Equally attractive was Stalin's idea that whatever the scale of the goal and however insurmountable the obstacles in the way, the task must be fulfilled, the mission accomplished. The moujik must become a steelworker, while the backward new Soviet Union, the republics of which everybody had beaten and humiliated in the past, must turn into a modern advanced country. To get things done-that was our guiding principle. All these commandments perfectly suited our condition, for we were dwarfs moved by the chimerical ambition to bring down the Wehrmacht giant. But in the last analysis, what counted most was that under German occupation (for it was occupation, as proved on 23 August 1944), our only hope was the Red Army, whose commander in chief was Stalin. And there is yet another thing, perhaps more important than a coldblooded political and military calculation: Stalinists involved in such a perilous underground struggle, facing death every day and every minute, needed a faith-something that inspired courage and kept up morale-yes, an essentially fantastic or mystical faith such as inspired the few that in our country opposed the fascist dictatorship. Those who lacked it proved unable to resist the pressure and the terror; they submitted and turned traitors. I have known such people, but I have also known a comrade who, after being dragged for seventeen years (no joke, that!) through the Stalinist gulags, was ready to lay down his life for Stalin when he returned to Romania in 1945. Only faith can ac-

34

The Stalinist Faith

count for the many bolsheviks Stalin sentenced to death yet who died with his name on their lips. Every night I heard the BBC-lei Landres! I was thrilled by every beat of the metronome that preceded the news broadcast. Stalin's proclamations in his typical laconic style filled me with vigor and hope. I lived through the extraordinary epic of Stalingrad as if it had been my own dramatic experience, as if I had before me a much beloved fellow being felled by disease yet gradually coming back to life. The night the news was broadcast that the iron ring of the Red Army had closed around Field Marshal Freidrich Paulus's divisions and that his only way out was to surrender, I gave a joyful cry, after which I opened a bottle of red wine I kept for special occasions, drank it all, and fell into a happy sleep. The ensuing Soviet military communique sounded like a victorious trumpet, and the famous English military expert Liddle Hart was able to conclude that nothing could henceforth stop the advance of the Red Army into German territory. At that time, I could have written the most zealous eulogy of Stalin's military genius, as I subsequently did in Scfnteia. That was how I became a Stalinist. At the time I did not know several things about the "strategist of genius"-that he was an imposter in military science; that he had butchered the Red Army leaders (Marshal Tuchachevsky was one of the first) because his paranoid mind was taken in by the Hitlerite Abwehr's clever strategem; that he ignored all the Soviet intelligence warnings that Hitler was preparing to invade the Soviet Union because his pride could not accept the failure of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact his diabolical mind had devised. Nor did I know anything about Stalin's other wrongdoings, about which I was to hear at a later date (and shall deal with hereafter).

A Newspaper as a Party Task The first team assigned to publish Scinteia in September 1944 was quite a mixture of personalities. The editor was Miron Constantinescu, a fount of knowledge and a fulminating revolutionary (we called him Jupiter Tonnans), who needed a scribe and a grammarian to make his articles intelligible. Then there was Pavel Chirtoadi, his skeleton face distorted by diseases after a life in jail, who was an expert in agriculture; Demeny Iosif Ardeleanu, who knew Hungarian better than Romanian; Stela Moghioro~, who knew Russian better than Romanian; and Matei Socor, who knew all about music but nothing about journalism. I was the only one who had some experience in journalism and thus was made managing editor. One day Iosif Chi~inevschi, the propaganda

The Stalinist Faith

35

secretary, summoned us and said: "Go to the Curentul paper" (in a building erected by Pamfil ~eicaru and popularly known as "7 etaje, 7 §antaje"-seven stories, seven blackmails). "It is Monday today; on Wednesday you will issue the first number of Scinteia. You have good printing works there and I have spoken with the workers; they will assist you. It is a party task!" We issued it, heaven knows how! The first week I did not manage to write a single article, as I was busy rewriting the articles of the other editors. I enlisted Nestor Ignat, Ion Calugaru, and Traian ~elmaru in order to strengthen the cultural makeup of the editorial staff, for its political makeup was impeccable. "Too many intellectuals," Chi~inevschi declared, and he brought us a number of front-ranking workers selected from among the best in heavy industry. When they wrote, they seemed to hit the "class enemy" with a sledgehammer. It was romantic in the beginning. Miron Constantinescu and I slept on the floor under rugs, as we used to do after cell meetings in the secret houses of the party. Before going to sleep, we put our Beretta pistols under the pillows, as we had seen done in cowboy films. Food was brought from the party canteen three times a day; we had a cooker to make Turkish coffee, and lots of cigarettes, so we had everything to carry on. Two months later, when we were invited to the Central Committee cashier to collect our salaries, we looked at each other in wonder: What do they pay us for? Is it not a party task? Lack of contact with reality was an almost general characteristic of those coming from the underground. But the romantic period did not last long. One year later, we were all accommodated in comfortable, well-furnished flats and were able to get the basic food, even a bottle of wine now and then, from the Scinteia food department. As long as other papers came out-some of them very good professionally-we had to face competition. We fought fiercely to win readers over. I worked all day in the editorial office, then went to the printing works to set the pages. After the copies were printed, several of us set off in the distribution lorries at daybreak, taking posters with us to make sure the papers were well exhibited because most of the newspaper kiosks were in the hands of war veterans who would have nothing to do with the communists and sabotaged the sale of Scinteia. Competition compelled us to fight in order to get the latest news and comments. If Agerpress released important news at ten or even eleven o'clock at night, I would write a brief comment on it, sometimes resorting to the stenographer. The years went by, the papers of the various parties as well as the independent ones disappeared successively, and the Scinteia journalists

36

The Stalinist Faith

turned into office functionaries. They came at 9 a.m. and left for home at 5 p.m. Three pages were completed in the afternoon; page four was left open for late foreign news, and members of the editorial committee took turns remaining on duty for the purpose. We became office clerks with an eight-hour workday! But the function of a party paper remained in force. Scfnteia, according to Lenin's teaching, had to be not only a collective propagandist and agitator but also a collective organizer. The editorial was the primary tool for this task. Only five or six columnists in our staff enjoyed the privilege of writing editorials, and they were not selected on the basis of professional ability. The partisan spirit, militant and ruthless, came first-so too, of course, did their social origin as workers, which posed a challenge for me in dealing with their grammar and syntax. Every morning, in all factories throughout the country, there was a party ritual: For half an hour, after punching the time clock to mark their presence, workers assembled in the cultural club, where the secretary of the party cell read aloud the Scfnteia editorial. Approval was unanimous, and thereafter all of them went to their workplace full of hope for a glorious future. Thus the mass of workers was ideologically indoctrinated, the "wooden language" was systematically introduced in their speech, and even their way of thinking was molded and shaped. The most ardent supporters of the regime carried the party line even at home, in their families, repeating at dinner not a prayer of thanks but the message of the Scinteia editorial. This was how people were turned docile and conformist in communist society-and how Romanians became a nation of sheep. I should add here that after the editorial was accepted by the editor in chief, it was regularly sent to the Central Committee to be sanctioned by the propaganda secretary, sometimes at late hours. To avoid the need for last-minute writing in case of rejection, we always had a substitute in the backlog. After each party congress, we made a list of thirty topics based on the Central Committee report delivered by the general secretary; this list too was sent to the propaganda section for approval, so that for one month we no longer had to think up editorial subjects. Only in case of extraordinary events, domestic or international, were we allowed to interrupt for one or two days the sequence of approved editorials. After Plenary meetings of the Central Committee or speeches of the party leader, we made a list of five to ten editorial topics that followed the same procedure. In 1951, as head of a delegation of ten Romanian journalists, I was sent to Moscow to visit Pravda for an "exchange of experience"-in fact, to learn from Big Brother how to make up and publish a commu-

The Stalinist Faith

37

nist paper. Very soon, we realized that we had applied the Soviet journalism model fairly well, because both our teachers in the matter, Iosif Chi~nevschi and Leonte Rautu, had been educated in Soviet schools. The editor in chief of Pravda at the time was P. Ilichiev, a short and stout man who wore glasses through which came a piercing look from two squirrel-like eyes. Only once did we have a "meeting in two, /1 but I recall very little of our conversation because it took place around a table with a fantastic display of hors d'oeuvres: caviar (at the time, one used to gulp it with a tablespoon), smoked salmon, crab with mayonnaise, three types of zakuska, pickled mushrooms, eels with onionsall with soft black bread and a fatal brand of vodka-Sibirskaya, 90 grades (percent)! Small wonder that I can't remember what we talked about, for my host stubbornly insisted I drain a full glass of that deadly Sibirskaya, after which I nearly jumped to my feet and started a wild kasatchok dance. Fortunately, we had been warned at home (during the briefing at the Central Committee held for all delegations traveling abroad) not to drink alcohol on an empty stomach but first to swallow lots of food to ward off the effects. Soviet hosts tremendously enjoyed getting their guests befuddled by making toasts to Stalin and the world revolution and by urging them to drink innumerable glasses of vodka. We all rigorously observed that precious advice, and as a result, all members of the delegation returned home having put on weight-ten pounds or more. However, I recall one piece of advice Ilichiev gave me as he also became a bit tipsy: "Never follow instructions on the phone from your bosses at the Central Committee because if they prove wrong later, the comrades from above will invariably pretend that they told you something else, namely what was correct, and they will put all the blame on you." At that time I spoke Russian quite fluently, after an intensive course that had started in 1946. I watched the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovscenko, listened to Stalin's speeches on tape, and read Pravda every day, and I sometimes discovered in my articles sentences with a specific Russian structure. Thus, my experience at Pravda had a sense of familiarity about it, though I did learn about the column "Party Life" and adopted it in Scfnteia as soon as I was back home. The guiding principle was that one should not recount in detail how a meeting of a party cell took place but rather how it should be organized, thus offering models of good organization and of right behavior of party members. In other words, political indoctrination in psychic and mental conformity molded party members so that, eventually, all behaved like one, and one like all. When George Orwell wrote 1984, he did not real-

38

The Stalinist Faith

ize that what appeared as a fantastic vision had turned into a science in the USSR.

The Soviet Fifth Column in the Party There was a sudden change in the Communist Party of Romania in 1944 that antedated the August revolution. The pulse began to beat after the great Soviet offensive had been unleashed over a wide front, more particularly the offensive of the groups of armies of the second Ukrainian front under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. In April a coup de force in Bucharest ousted ~tefan Fori~ from the party leadership. Installation of a triumvirate of Constantin Parvulescu, Emil Bodnara~, and Iosif Rangetz gave a dynamic impulse to the entire underground movement. Lucretiu Patra~canu was released and placed under gendarme watch in the villa at Poiana Tapului, but he managed to slip away to Bucharest. He was a relative of General Picky Vasiliu, the minister of Interior. Constantin Doncea, one of the organizers of the 1933 railway strikes, who had left the country to fight as a volunteer in the Spanish civil war and had subsequently emigrated to the USSR, was parachuted by the Soviets into Romania's Fagara~ Mountains and resumed his underground activity. In accordance with a plan worked out by Ion Gheorghe Maurer and Bodnara~, the flight of Gheorghiu-Dej from the TirguJiu camp was organized on 9 August. Gheorghiu-Dej was taken to a secret party house in Oltenia that had been especially prepared by Mihail Ro~ianu, party secretary for Oltenia. All of these activists recognized Gheorghiu-Dej as the party leader. Gheorghe Gheorghiu had been an outstanding worker, asserting himself as a good organizer and a gifted leader even as a young man. In the small Transylvanian town of Dej, the name of which was added to his, he organized a number of resounding activities, while during the Grivita strikes in 1932 and 1933 and during the trial that followed, he consolidated his position in the party. In all the jails and camps he was in over a fourteen-year period, his natural intelligence, tact, and extraordinary self-control secured him a front-rank position among political prisoners. His formal education was meager (only a few elementary school classes), but he learned with exceptional energy and tenacity and acquired all the knowledge and cultural notions he could get from the intellectuals imprisoned with him. He learned Russian and could speak it fairly well, but he was unable to read it because of the Cyrillic alphabet. As a highly qualified electrician, he drew wages at the railways as high as those of young engineers: 6,000 lei.

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Although I met Gheorghiu-Dej in 1944, I did not fully appreciate the significance of his professional skill until I was ambassador in Washington in the late 1950s and brought home assorted electric and electronic appliances. He would take them to pieces and put them together again with great skill, showing technical curiosity. That quality, I think, underlay his respect for professional competence and generally for educated people, whose knowledge and expertise he highly appreciated. This was one of the marked differences between him and Nicolae Ceau~escu, who, unable to learn a trade (he never managed to make a shoe at the time he was apprentice to a shoemaker), showed contempt and even hostility toward experts and toward intellectuals generally, formulating a well-known theory according to which a party activist must be proficient in all things. Gheorghiu-Dej moreover had an imposing, manly presence. He looked strong and handsome, hence his success with women. Gheorghiu-Dej and I first met in the provisional party headquarters in Alexandru Alley, immediately after 23 August. From the first moment there was a direct communion between us. Although he enjoyed a reputation of which he was fully aware-the halo of an underground fighter who had lived through many difficult trials and had successfully overcome them-he was modest and naturally gracious in his behavior. He was also very communicative and friendly, behaving quite differently from the comrades who had long years of service behind them and were trying to assert themselves by a severe, somewhat mysterious mien intended to connote an aura of importance. It was in Gheorghiu-Dej, especially in his evolution, that I first became aware of how the mantle of power effects changes in a person. Initially he showed respect and deference toward the older party comrades (he was visibly reverential in addressing Parvulescu, who had taken part in the Russian Revolution of 1917), and it seemed to him only natural that Ana Pauker, with her heroic past (she defiantly stood up to the military court at the Craiova trial in the 1920s) and the experience she had gained in Moscow, should become party leader. When Pauker came back to Romania in September 1944, Gheorghiu-Dej was among the first to support her nomination as secretary-general. I remember it all: The first conflict broke out when, at a meeting of the provisional Political Bureau, she minimized the act of 23 August 1944, describing the party's contribution to it as a "pplitical mistake." Parvulescu protested vehemently, while Bodnara~ quoted Marshal Malinovsky's views, adopted by Stalin, to the effect that the coup d'etat of 23 August had overthrown the entire German strategic disposition in the Balkans. It was the first clash between the "exterior

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group" of leaders coming from the Soviet Union and the party leaders from inside the country. At that meeting Gheorghiu-Dej made no comments, but over a glass of red wine (his foible) one night, he poured out his feelings. I had come to party headquarters after finishing my work at Scinteia, and I met him in the corridor; he seemed visibly grieved and felt the need of getting it all off his chest. We went to his room, and once there he burst out. A typical trait he had when he faced intricate political problems was to ponder for long, weighing matters carefully, and take his time before reaching a conclusion or making a decision. He had been very proud of the part the party played in driving Antonescu away and turning the country's arms against Hitlerite Germany. He had required us journalists to emphasize the fact that when the Soviet troops were approaching Bucharest, he and Gheorghe Apostol had met them with flowers at the outskirts of the city, reporting to the Soviet commander that the city had been cleared of Germans and was fully controlled by the Romanian authorities. "Now, I am at a loss what to think," he said when we reached his room. "Comrade Ana may have talked to the Soviet comrades, and if it is their opinion that it would have been preferable for them to enter Bucharest as a victorious army, thus getting rid of the king and the bourgeois parties, there might be something in it. 11 Gheorghiu-Dej was obviously disconcerted, for the Soviet Union's appreciation was holy writ to him at the time. Nevertheless, out of a habit he acquired in prison, where he had plenty of time at his disposal, he engaged in hairsplitting. "Well," he said,"let's see what would have happened if there had been no 23 August. The Soviet forces would have surrounded the city, and the German and Romanian troops would have put up a fierce resistance. The Soviet artillery would have fired on the city, the Katiushas would have exploded on Calea Victoriei, the airplanes would have bombed the city systematically, and Bucharest would have been reduced to dust. What do you say to that?" I said it would have been a great misfortune-tens of thousands of dead and incalculable destruction, while politically the Bucharest people would have booed the Soviet soldiers instead of meeting them with flowers and cheers. I told him my opinion, namely that I did not believe the leaders of the Soviet Union were sorry 23 August had taken place, and the best proof of it was that Stalin had awarded King Michael the highest Soviet order (Victoria) for this very reason. Nevertheless, Gheorghiu-Dej was disconcerted. He couldn't yet summon the courage to contradict Ana Pauker, for at the time he thought she enjoyed Moscow's support. He only became self-confident after meeting Stalin in Moscow in January 1945, their first per-

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sonal encounter. At the time, Gheorghiu-Dej was minister of communications in General Radescu's cabinet; the official purpose of the visit was to discuss certain problems of Romania's national economy and transportation. It was a perfectly legitimate pretext, although Gheorghiu-Dej knew very well the real objective was for Stalin to choose the leader of the Communist Party of Romania. Maybe the decision had already been made, but Stalin wanted to size up GheorghiuDej and see if, and to what extent, he could count on him. I had already become Gheorghiu-Dej's favorite drafter of speeches and party documents. He read my Scfnteia articles regularly, and he greatly enjoyed my satirical notes, in which I argued with Nicolae Carandino, the editor of Dreptatea. One day Gheorghiu-Dej summoned me to propose that "we should work together," adding with humility "my writing is not up to much." I was glad to accept. I liked the man and I think he reciprocated my feeling, for he fairly often summoned me when he felt the need to open out to someone. He called me Tache, my underground name, and we gradually came to talk not only politics but also personal matters. His two daughtersLica and Tanta-were a headache. After years of dire poverty and social rejection (daughters of a communist jailbird!), with a mother who had seen another man while Gheorghiu-Dej was in jail, they suddenly found themselves rich and lost their heads. And because the two girls were temperamental (being chips off the old block), and quite a few men were eager to be the boss's sons-in-law, Lica and Tanta were raising problems for him.

Stalin: Maker of Party Leaders Gheorghiu-Dej summoned me on his return from Moscow. He was already a different man. Stalin had chosen him to lead the party, and the decision, like a magic hand, had transformed him. I immediately noticed the self-assurance in his speech, and his attire was also different. For the first time he was wearing a tie and a coat on an informal occasion, after the evening meal (I was used to seeing him in a pullover, an unbuttoned shirt, and slippers). He described the scene in the Kremlin, imitating Stalin's and Molotov's gestures and tones. He had a remarkable dramatic talent. Everything had taken place in Stalin's office. The first thing Gheorghiu-Dej had noticed when Stalin stood up to meet him and shake hands was that the latter was very short. The dictator deliberately avoided being photographed standing so that his small stature would not be noticed (Ceau~escu had the same complex). Stalin politely introduced Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, the Soviet prime

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minister, and motioned Gheorghiu-Dej to take a seat. He went on speaking while walking to and fro. Gheorgiu-Dej repeated the conversation to me: "'I have asked you to come over,' he said, 'so that we may discuss the question of party leadership. I shall go straight to the point.' He stopped right before me and looked me straight in the face as if he wanted to find out what was going on in my mind. For the moment, I felt as if I was facing the military prosecutor. Stalin realized how I felt and lowered his voice. 'We are between comrades and I should like you to tell us what, in your opinion, is the most urgent task facing your party at present.' I pondered a while before answering him. 'Comrade Stalin,' I said, 'the most urgent task ... actually there are two urgent tasks: We have engaged in war as allies of the Red Army and we must mobilize all our resources to support the final assault-if need be, as far as Berlin. At the same time, we must revive the economy of the country to increase the output and also to supply the population with consumer goods. The two must go hand in hand.'" Gheorghiu-Dej added: "I was scanning his face while I was speaking and it was obvious that he liked what I was saying. When I stopped talking, he stopped walking. He only added: 'Yes, you are right!'-after which Molotov said: 'Yes, Iosif Vissarionovich, I spoke with Comrade Ana over the telephone yesterday. She underlined the priority of the front and said that the party slogan was Everything for the front.'" (Molotov supported Ana Pauker as the choice for party leader). '"Of course, of course,' Stalin countered. 'But the population also, not only the soldiers, must be taken care of. The Romanian comrade has put the problem correctly. Let it be so.'" Gheorghiu-Dej said a long silence followed, which was broken by Stalin: "'My dear Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, Ana is a good, reliable comrade, but you see, she is a Jewess of bourgeois origin, and the party in Romania needs a leader from the ranks of the working class, a trueborn Romanian.' He then came up to me and held out his hand: 'I have decided. I wish you every success, comrade secretary-general!'" That was the end of the visit. A formidable scene, worth including in an anthology of significant moments in the history of the communist movement! I hastened to the editorial office, took my reporter's agenda out of the safe, and feverishly put down the whole story using my special code. (I should note here Gheorghiu-Dej's remark to the effect that the interpreter in Moscow had been excellent, because it recalls an event in New York in 1960 that illustrates Gheorghiu-Dej's appreciation of precision in language. He had sailed there aboard the Baltica with Khrushchev to attend the UN session. Gheorghiu-Dej was witty: He liked to

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joke, and of course at home everybody laughed on such occasions even if the joke was not very good. However, when he attended receptions in New York, accompanied by an interpreter recruited by the security service, he was disappointed to find that people did not laugh at his jokes; they did not even smile. But the U.S. secretary of state once invited only two guests from every country to an official dinner: the head of the delegation and the ambassador-the permanent representative. So I accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej and, naturally, acted as his interpreter, and whenever Gheorgiu-Dej made a joke, the other guests laughed whole-heartedly. "That's it!" Gheorghiu-Dej exclaimed. "From now on you'll be my interpreter, and I'll dispatch Vasilica by the first plane to Bucharest." Indeed, the supreme test for an interpreter is the translation of a joke.) During the first years after the war, Gheorghiu-Dej was behaving humanely; he had not yet become party leader. Once he called together all the editors of publications and, to our great surprise, began reading a Scfnteia article signed by Sergiu Farca~anu, who heaped superlatives at him. Every time there was an obsequious passage, he would read and reread it in a bantering tone, adding such comments as "Listen to this-unheard of!" or "Formidable!" or "Nothing like it in the world!" and other such remarks. Sergiu had been specially invited; he was white as a sheet. Actually he was afraid rather than ashamed. "A velvety language," said Gheorghiu-Dej, and this expression became proverbial among newspaper writers. That was also the time he took the unusual step of ordering the release of several comrades, among them Gogu Radulesu, Aurel Vijoli, and Mihai Levente, who had been imprisoned by his order (he claimed he did it at the request of the Soviet counselors), and of very soon appointing them members of the Central Committee or the government. He was very proud of this decision and pointed to it as proof that he was not vindictive. Later, however, he began to be pleased with laudatory articles and became ruthless toward anyone who made a move out of step. Scinteia had already received directives to avoid mentioning the established hierarchy in listing the members of the party leadership. In September 1944 the list in order was Ana Pauker, Gheorghiu-Dej, and Vasile Luca. The court poets also used to dedicate their verses mostly to Ana (Dumitru Corbea's lines ran as follows: "Her heart I Stands unshakable I Above the Three"). It became obvious after the Moscow trip · "Ana-Luca-Teo-Dej I Took the hell out of burgheji (the bourgeois)" was no longer in vogue. The group from outside the country in the party leadership, which used to predominate, was losing ground. The official election of Gheorghiu-Dej took place at the party's national conference in October 1945. The old tradition of the Ottoman

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Empire was being resumed under new historical conditions. Formerly, the candidates to the throne of Walachia and Moldavia had to go to the Sublime Porte in Stamboul to be "anointed." The Sublime Porte was now in Moscow. But the group from outside the country did not easily give in, and the links with Soviet institutions, especially the NKVD (Lavrenti Beria's much feared security service), remained intact. The group kept its numerical superiority in the Political Bureau (four versus three) with Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, Teohari Georgescu, and Iosif Chi~inevschi, while in the Secretariat, Gheorghiu-Dej again had to face the first three of these. Nevertheless, the Central Committee's report to the October conference as well as other documents already bore the personal mark of Gheorghiu-Dej. The report emphasized the old traditions of the working-class and socialist movement in Romania, and the preamble to the party's statutes contained first and foremost an enumeration of past great revolutionaries (Gheorghe Doja, Clo~ca and Cri~an Horia, Tudor Vladimirescu, and Nicolae Balcescu) as well as of the great personalities of the socialist movement (C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Ion Frimu, Dumitru Marinescu, and the like). Because Gheorghiu-Dej wished to stress the national origins of the party and of socialism, he changed the name of the Communist Party of Romania to the Romanian Communist Party. But, as we shall see hereafter, Gheorgiu-Dej was to prove a worthy disciple of Stalin, for he gradually got rid of his opponents in the Political Bureau-and of all the Soviet agents in the party.

Vyshinsky and the Petru Groza Cabinet For Stalin, the key problem was the election of the leader of the Communist Party in Romania. The rest had been arranged with Churchill in October 1944 in Moscow and finalized at Yalta in February 1945. The Allied Control Commission-consisting of the representatives of the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain and chaired by Susaikow, a Soviet general-worked to implement those decisions, namely that "in Romania, 90 percent is designed for the USSR." But the main executant was Andrey Yanuarevich Vyshinsky, the wellknown chairman of the USSR Supreme Court. He had judged and sentenced-or rather had sentenced and then judged-so-called saboteurs in the lawsuits of the industrial "party" in 1930; in fact, Stalin determined the sentences, and the suits later merely produced the proofs required. For the diligence shown in these lawsuits, Stalin had appointed him attorney general of the USSR and put him in charge of the trials of

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the right-wing and left-wing groupings of Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Nikolay Bukharin. Vyshinsky often landed at the Bucharest airport destined of course for the royal palace. In February 1945 the class struggle was at its sharpest in Romania, although the winner of this struggle had been decided by Churchill and Stalin. The Sanatescu cabinet had been replaced by a cabinet headed by General Radescu, under whom the Communist Party for the first time set foot in the Ministry of Home Affairs, with Teohari Georgescu as state secretary. At the Aro auditorium on 11 February, General Radescu delivered an incendiary speech, the sharpest point of which was directed against the communist leaders. He pledged not to let the country be the prey of anarchy and of "a rule that was foreign to our nation." This was only half true, and those who felt the thrust was pointing to them described the general's speech as being "racist." The National Democratic Front-to which the Communist Party rallied the Ploughmen's Front, the National Peasant grouping headed by Anton Alexandrescu, the National Liberal grouping headed by Gheorghe 1atarescu, a former premier, the Social Democratic Party headed by ~tefan Voitec and Lothar Radaceanu, and the Social Peasant Party headed by Mihai Ralea-organized a great people's demonstration on 24 February; there were nearly half a million participants. I was in the Palace Square that evening; by Radescu's order, the soldiers started firing from the roofs of the palace and the Ministry of the Interior (this building was subsequently to house the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party). They were actually firing above the demonstrators' heads in order to disperse the people and not to kill them. Had it been otherwise, thousands would have died. Indeed, most people fled; only Lucretiu Patra~canu remained in the square, a courageous act I wrote about that night. Radescu, the poor man, believed-as Antonescu had-that he was an independent historical agent. In fact, his fate had been decided by the Big Three, and the only thing left for him was to fly to ... -I don't even know where-aboard a military aircraft. On 26 February Vyshinsky landed in Bucharest. Constantin Vi~oianu, Romania's foreign affairs minister at the time, stated in his memoirs that Stalin's envoy had asked through the agency of the Soviet embassy to be received by the king at 3 p.m. the next day. That was that-the order had to be carried out to the letter. It was Vyshinsky's first audience with the king: Three more followed, each time in Vi~oainu's presence. According to the latter's memoirs, Vyshinsky's first request was that Radescu be dismissed. At his third audience, on 28 February, he gave the king time to think it over and answer in the affirmative within two hours. Should the an-

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swer be in the negative, Stalin's attorney general specified, the USSR would no longer answer for "Romania's independence." He rose, banged his fist upon the table, and left, slamming the door so hard that the wall split around it. In short, a forceps was used to give birth to the cabinet of wide democratic concentration headed by Dr. Petru Graza. It was only a simulated form of political pluralism-a "bon pour l'Orient" form: Graza represented the Ploughmen's Front; Gheorghe latarescu, a Liberal Party leader and former prime minister, was vicepresident and foreign minister, and his party was further represented by two ministers; Lothar Radaceanu, a Socialist leader, was minister of labor; Mihai Ralea, head of the Social Peasant Party, was a member of the cabinet; Romulus Zaroni, a kulak belonging to the Ploughmen's Front, was minister of agriculture; Anton Alexandrescu, of the dissident National Peasant Party, was cooperation minister; and Gheorghiu-Dej, Patra~canu, and Teohari Georgescu, all three communists, were ministers of communications, justice, and internal affairs, respectively. Immediately after the Graza cabinet took power, Stalin returned northern Transylvania to Romania-a gesture designed to strengthen the authority of the new regime in Romania. Although northern Transylvania had been mostly reconquered by dint of the bravery and sacrifices of the Romanian army, the Soviet used it as a card to bring about a cabinet dominated by communists. During this period, the intelligentsia made important contributions to the political scene. A lecture the popular writer Mihail Sadoveanu delivered at the Romanian Athenaeum titled "Light Cornes from the East" was one of the most significant accessions to Romania's new political orientation. Following in the track of Constantin Parhon, a great scholar and the first president of the Romanian Republic, Sadoveanu later became chairman of the Assembly of Deputies. Other foremost Romanian intellectuals-including Traian Savulescu and Grigore Constantin Moisil, George Calinescu and Perpessicius, Cezar Petrescu and Cami! Petrescu, Geo Bogza and later Tudor Arghezi-took an active part in the new political system.

People's Democracies and Cold War Not long after its accession to power, the Petru Graza cabinet carried out the main reform listed in the platform of the National Democratic Front: the land reform whereby the land was distributed among the peasants and the huge landlord estates were reduced to fifty hectares. Lenin's old idea was thus being carried out. According to him, in backward countries such as Russia, the revolution had to be carried out in two stages: a bourgeois-democratic stage, during which the sociopo-

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litical changes of the bourgeois revolution should be implemented by eliminating landowners and allotting land to peasants, and then only afterward the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, once in power, Lenin had his Bolshevik Party bypass the bourgeois-democratic stage and proceeded to install war communism, which went beyond even the socialist revolution. It was only after four years of economic disaster and famine that Lenin realized he had skipped over not one but two revolutionary stages, and he tried to mend matters by initiating the New Economic Policy, a kind of halfway formula between the economic omnipotence of the state and a sector of farming production and of goods exchanges between villages and towns functioning according to the laws of the market. But very soon after Lenin's death, Stalin could no longer endure the small peasant production and the laws of the market. He switched to the forced collectivization of agriculture and an industrialization drive that was equally forced, putting even the service sector under state control, down to the small repair shops in the towns, so that people no longer could have shoes or clothes repaired. In Romania, everything proceeded more or less similarly, although the international pattern was quite different and it could no longer be alleged that there was a capitalist encirclement, as Stalin had claimed. Under the influence of Gheorghi Dimitrov, the Bulgarian leader, immediately after the war Stalin had accepted the concept of people's democracy and also the strategy of gradual changes of a bourgeoisdemocratic nature in East European countries. Dimitrov defined the strategy in clear-cut terms: "Our immediate task is neither the realization of socialism, nor the introduction of the Soviet system, but the consolidation of a democratic and parliamentary regime." International market conditions as well as the economic interests of the Soviet Union, which Stalin conceived at the time to be closely related to substantial U.S. aid (the foodstuffs and other goods received from the United States during the war had made him realize the potential benefits of such aid) suggested that a cautious Soviet foreign policy should be carried out toward Washington and London. Actually, Stalin had reached his main goal: Political regimes friendly to the Soviet Union had been established in all East European countries, and the presence of the Red Army in those countries was a guarantee of their stability and orientation. This is why, at the end ofJune 1945 in Moscow, when the Polish National Unity government was formed, Stalin specified in his toast that the Soviet-Polish alliance was not sufficient, and that the two countries should be allied to the West-to Great Britain, France, and the United States. "I propose we should toast these allies," he said. Before long, however, significant changes took place on the chessboard of world politics. After the death of President Roosevelt, who be-

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lieved there could be actual cooperation with the USSR after the war, Harry Truman, who followed him at the White House, suddenly altered the course in U.S. relations with Moscow. The first decision hostile to the USSR was the abrupt cancellation in May 1949 of the LendLease program and the cessation of deliveries of food, clothing, weapons, and ammunition to the Soviet Union. The situation on the front was no longer such as had influenced Washington and London to accept the pro-Soviet regimes set up in East European countries as a buffer zone essential to Soviet security. Gone were the years when the only hope of defeating Hitler's plans of world dominion was the Red Army. The Wehrmacht's defeat had changed the military situation in Europe, and the explosion of the atom bomb over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 had given the United States a military asset that, in Truman's view, had changed the power balance with the USSR. Nor did Churchill live any longer in fear of a Hitlerite invasion of England, so that on 5 March 1956, in Fulton, Missouri, he delivered an incendiary speech against the Soviet Union and the "police states." It was the statement that inaugurated the Cold War. Churchill was the first to mention the "iron curtain" between Western and Eastern Europe. In an article that became famous, George Kennan advocated a "containment policy" against communism, while the Truman Doctrine, not content with containment, advocated the more dynamic "rollback policy" whereby communism was to be rolled back and, implicitly, capitalism was to be reestablished in Eastern Europe. Considering the new international situation, Stalin drastically changed his policy in Eastern Europe. A la gue"e comme ala gue"e, the French say. "We have to rough it," Stalin said to himself. "To hell with the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Let's do it our way." Dimitrov fell out of favor, and directives flew to all East European capitals to the effect that economic reforms were to become radical, the political system of the single party was to be strengthened, and repression against the class enemy was to be intensified. In Romania, the campaign designed to do away with the opposition parties began with the "Tiimadau coup" of 14June 1947. In early June, the National Peasant Party had received from the West a message concerning the organization of the flight of a group of leaders who were to form a Romanian government in exile. The message was transmitted by Dr. C. Gafencu through the son of Emil Hatieganu, a National Peasant Party leader; the flight was to be carried out by two IAR-30 planes. However, the secret police learned of the plan from one of the pilots chosen for the purpose. As the would-be fugitives were boarding the planes, the police appeared and arrested the following: Ion Mihalache (National Peasant Party 'vice president) and his wife; Nicolae Penescu

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(general secretary) and his wife; Nicolae Carandino (editor of

Dreptatea) and his wife; Ilie Lazar (another party leader); and others.

Naturally, a big fuss was made about the attempt to cross the frontier fraudulently, which was immediately labeled "national treason." Dozens of people's meetings were organized demanding that the National Peasant Party be dissolved, the would-be fugitives be brought to trial, and the other leaders of the National Peasant Party, Iuliu Maniu first, be arrested. All of this was done as demanded by "the people." On 1 July, the Assembly of Deputies canceled the parliamentary immunity of the National Peasant deputies; National Peasant publications, including Dreptatea, the official paper, were banned; and Iuliu Maniu was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment. On 30 July, the Council of Ministers dissolved the National Peasant Party. Also at this time, Pite§ti, Aiud, and other gulags were set up in Romania. The activities designed to eliminate any organized opposition in the country reached their peak on 30 December 1947, when King Michael was forced to abdicate after being pressured by Petru Groza and Gheorghiu-Dej. Things did not go so easy in the royal palace. Gheorghiu-Dej told me that the king initially was adamant and rejected the proposition. But later, after getting the advice of his courtiers, who knew about the Churchill-Stalin deal on Romania and saw no future for the monarchy, he acceded to the abdication-though he drove a hard bargain over compensation. Mihai Levente, who was in charge of the arrangement, told me that five special train wagons filled with furniture and precious objects, including paintings and sculp-

tures, accompanied the royal sleeping car. In February 1948, a congress was held that combined the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party into a new unified Romania Workers' Party; this action achieved the "political unity of the working class of Romania." (The prelude to political and organizational unification had already taken place in May 1944, when a single WorkingClass Front had been formed out of the two parties.) The opening speech was delivered by ~tefan Voitec, a socialist leader; the political report was submitted by Gheorghiu-Dej; and the report on the draft statutes of the new party was read by Lothar Radaceanu, another socialist leader. The process for the establishment of a political system of the Stalinist type was thus concluded in Romania.

Purge of the Soviet Agents The main political and ideological conflict between Gheorghiu-Dej and the Moscow-oriented group headed by Ana Pauker broke out on

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the issue of strategy for the collectivization of agriculture, although there had been earlier clashes on a number of other issues: the Sovrom (Soviet-Romanian) companies, the considerable number of Soviet counselors Pauker brought into ministries and industries, and the selection of cadres, especially the preference given to Bessarabians and their appointment to important posts (losif Chisinevschi, Pantiu~a, Mi~a Postanschi, and Alexandru Nicholschi, among others). On the collectivization issue the clashes were almost violent; they centered round the party document passed by the 1949 plenum of the Central Committee. I worked on the document and remember that Gheorghiu-Dej favored the so-called associations-a form of cooperative that preserved the property of the peasants who had only recently been allotted land but that provided a way to pool farming machinery and tractors for use over extensive areas. But Pauker and Vasile Luca insisted on direct and urgent adoption of Soviet-style kolkhozes-the collective farms. They kept quoting Lenin and his famous warning that the small peasant holdings generated capitalism every day and every hour. The outsiders carried the day, even though the plenum document was still permeated by the more reasonable bend of GheorghiuDej, who nevertheless believed associations were only a transition to collectivization. Not until the 29 February 1952 plenum of the Central Committee, when Gheorghiu-Dej felt safely consolidated in power, did he denounce the fractionist antiparty and antistate activity of the outsider group. Much later, in 1961, he revealed that owing to Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Teohari Georgescu, "more than 80,000 peasants, most of them working peasants, were brought to trial in the name of the struggle against the kulaks." 1 Of the fractionists, Vasile Luca alone was brought to trial and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. He died in prison. Ana Pauker was treated leniently; she died of old age in a house in the Cotroceni district. Teohari Georgescu was for many years manager of the 13 Decembrie printing works, in which capacity he printed one of my books (Origins of the American Policy) in exceptional form. He was finally plying his trade.

Sentlmentalnii Chelovek In 1951, an important meeting between Stalin and Gheorghiu-Dej took place in Moscow. By Stalin's order, a series of witch-hunts had been unleashed in the people's democracies. It was not a matter of eliminating the class enemy (and in Stalin's mind that meant physical elimination). The people in question were old communists, heroes of

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the resistance movement against fascism, some of whom had fought in the Spanish civil war or with the French underground. It was a repetition of the famous Moscow show trials of the 1930s against the old bolsheviks (Trotsky or Bukharin) accused of right-wing or left-wing deviations. Because the accusations did not seem sufficiently convincing, the defendants were invariably charged with treason or espionage in favor of the imperialist powers. Now Stalin was anxious to export not only the Soviet model of state organization but its supplements, among which the so-called political trials had a place of honor, and the actors in them well-defined parts. The stage-manager prosecutor was to conduct the suit in such a manner that, whatever the accusation, in the last act the perpetrator confessed his crime. As a rule, this did not extenuate the guilt or mitigate the sentence, which was unfailingly death. The significant difference from the 1930s version was the ideological theme of the accusation, which had to be tailored to new historical conditions. Right-wing or left-wing deviation was considered passe; the new culprit devised for the people's democracies was something between Titoism, Zionism, and cosmopolitanism, the three of them being deemed equally noxious and dangerous for the fate of world socialism. Preserved from the old lawsuits was the organic mixture of espionage and treason in the service of imperialism, without which the ideological deviation was senseless and could not be substantiated. Bulgaria had inaugurated the series by arresting Traicio Kostov, formerly secretary-general of the Communist Party during the underground period. Next came Laszlo Raik, leader of the underground struggle in Hungary and subsequently minister of home affairs in the communist government. Albania tried Koci Xoxe, former minister of home affairs and vice-president of the Council of Ministers. But the most spectacular case was that of Rudolf Slansky, secretary-general of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party; there is evidence that his arrest was ordered by Stalin himself. Obviously Stalin had a desire to be rid of underground party leaders, but there was no scope for this in Romania-Pantiusha had forestalled him, killing ~tefan Fori~ in 1946. According to Soviet historians, Stalin was intent on these trials because he considered them confirmation of his absurd theory that in socialism the class struggle, instead of subsiding, was getting ever sharper. Under the circumstances, Gheorgiu-Dej's visit to Moscow meant that he was being called to account. Stalin was surprised to find that agents of international Titoism or Zionism had been discovered and arrested in all the people's democracies, but nothing of that sort had been undertaken in Romania. "You have people holding important posts who fought in Spain and France where the English and American

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The Stalinist Faith

services were very active," Stalin said. Gheorghiu-Dej conceded that we had people who had fought in Spain and France, but maintained that they were devoted to the party and were good friends of the Soviet Union. Stalin was most dissatisfied and wondered if Gheorghiu-Dej's revolutionary vigilance had not lost its vigor, allowing him to be led by sentiment. Miron Constantinescu jumped up, uttering the fatidical words: "On sentimentalnii chelovek" (he's a sentimental man), and he added: "We too need an iron hand." Stalin scanned Miron's face, sized him up and down, and said to Gheorghiu-Dej: "Yes, my dear Gheorghi Afanassievich, an iron hand is needed." When Gheorghiu-Dej related the scene to me I realized Miron was doomed, for Dej repeated what he had said to me when he heard that his selection as party leader was being privately questioned by Lucretiu Patra~canu, who wanted the post. Gheorghiu-Dej commented at the time: "When I was in prison I already realized that nobody should dare to challenge the party leadership." It sounded like a sentence. I got very uneasy about the fate of Miron Constantinescu, for I cared very much for him. But what could have come into Constantinescu's head? His intervention in Moscow sounded as if he was proposing himself to be the leader. I knew him to be ambitious, but not to that extent. Gheorghiu-Dej took Stalin's warnings seriously. There followed a campaign against cosmopolitanism, and the backgrounds of party members were carefully checked. As a result, about 400,000 members were expelled from the party. He saw to it that Stalin was well briefed about it all.

5

The National Backlash

In 1956, Gheorghiu-Dej was asked by Khrushchev to go to Budapest in order to reorganize the Hungarian Communist Party, which had been frittered away by the revolution, and to install Janos Kadar as secretary-general of the party. Gheorghiu-Dej planned to achieve this with the assistance of 2,000 Transylvanian activists of Hungarian origin he recruited from the Romanian Workers' Party. It was a task of great responsibility, which was proof not only of the confidence the Soviet leaders placed in Gheorghiu-Dej but also of their high appreciation of his political proficiency. I was in Washington (which is to be explained in Chapter 7) and was asked to fly home urgently. I met Gheorghiu-Dej immediately. For the first time he seemed to me to be troubled, greatly worried. He told me outright: "My dear Tache, we've got to turn our policy toward the Soviets around by 180 degrees, or we are lost." I was puzzled. I was coming from a social and diplomatic environment in which the events in Hungary had produced hysteria-collective hysteria. Two U.S. television crews happened to be in Budapest at the time lmre Nagy, the premier, had made the declaration of independence, and consequently I had seen on television all the fearful atrocities perpetrated there: agents of the Hungarian security hanged or hanging head downward in the streets, Stalin's statues torn down and smashed by sledgehammers, and then, in the second stage, the brutal repression of the Soviet troops. It was pandemonium. In Washington we were afraid to go out. The Hungarian minister fled, leaving behind a charge d'affaires-a bewildered, penniless young diplomat. The minister took all the legation's funds with him, and for three months we had to finance the young charge d'affaires to keep the mission going. Gheorghiu-Dej opened our discussion by describing his telephone conversation with Khrushchev. When he told Khrushchev about the 2,000 Hungarians who would accompany him to Budapest to help set 53

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the party there on its feet again, the latter exclaimed in admiration: '"Gheorghi Afanassievich, you are a genuine Bolshevik.'" It All Started in Budapest

Gheorghiu-Dej then described what he had seen in Budapest. He had taken with him two comrades who spoke Hungarian fluently: Valter Roman and the poet Mihai Beniuc. At about eight o'clock in the morning, after an all-night blitz of radio messages by the Soviet commander calling on Budapest citizens to report to work, open the shops, and resume normal life in the city, Gheorghiu-Dej accompanied by Valter Roman and Mihai Beniuc set off in a car along the main thoroughfares of Budapest to see the effect of the Soviet appeal. The boulevards were empty, not a soul anywhere. He asked the chauffeur to go round to the Csepel works, in the factory district. Everything was at a standstill there too. It was only as he was describing this scene that I understood the serious warning in the sentence he had greeted me with. He asked me to draw up the text of a secret document, exclusively for the members of the Politburo. The text was to analyze the international moment so that it might show clearly how a more independent Romanian position on the international arena might gradually be asserted, at the same time showing the Romanian people that our priority was the national interest and not Soviet interests, our former thrust. GheorghiuDej pointed out that the focus should be directed inside the country rather than outside "so as not to offend the Soviet comrades." (In a way, I was surprised at the lucidity and even the intellectual courage of his directives, for there was an implicit admission that up to that time he had given priority to Soviet interests.) He added: "I have also given directives that concurrently a paper should be drawn up listing the measures to be taken in our economic and cultural policy whereby we get rid of the embrace of the Soviet bear." He concluded: "You should bear in mind that everything must be done slowly, gradually, most tactfully-not hurry!" He repeated two of his favorite phrases: "We shouldn't draw the longbow, but neither should we whirl the sword of Damocles in the air to no purpose." I said: "I understand the message, Comrade Gheorghiu-Dej, and I am happier to be entrusted with this task than with any other. In Washington and at the UN I too felt that-how shall I put it?-a desatellitization move was needed." "Yes," he said, "that is the right word. Desatellitization. To work then!" The most vehement and irate critic of the text of my memorandum at the meeting of the Politburo was Nicolae Ceau~escu. He said out-

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55

right that such turnaround was wrong in theory and unrealistic in practice, and indeed, his arguments were quite convincing. Alexandro Draghici and Petre Borila immediately sided with him. I realized the impending danger and demanded the floor. I sought to demolish Ceau~escu's theoretical structure by pointing out that Marxist literature never dealt with the policy carried on by the great socialist powers, in our case the USSR, which was a superpower with worldwide military and strategic interests that did not always coincide with those of the other socialist countries. I gave such examples as China and its conflicts with the USSR, Tito's Yugoslavia, and even Romania, which the USSR, through the annexation of Bessarabia and the Sovrom companies, had exploited in a "true comradely fashion"-a proven case by that time. Moreover, after Stalin's death, even a Soviet statement acknowledged that the USSR had violated the principles of equality and independence in its relations with the socialist countries. I closed by remindingthe Politburo how the Soviet leadership had compelled our party to declare Romania to be a "multinational state," an obviously fallacious position enabling the former rulers of the country to state that the Communist Party was "a USSR agency." I also mentioned the fact that when the Iron Guard, trained and financed by Hitler, was gaining ground in Romania, our party had been forced to direct its attacks against France and England, as dictated by the interests of Moscow's foreign policy. Ceau~escu had no reply to the latter arguments and had to swallow the bitter pill; he had been trounced and humiliated by the Guardists in prison and could never forgive them that.

When the Bear Let Its Prey Go Desatellitization was inconceivable so long as there were Soviet troops in the country. In a number of Western writings, it was stated that the issue had been taken up with Khrushchev by Ion Gheorghe Maurer; Khrushchev in his memoirs mentioned only Bodnara~, who had been entrusted by the Politburo with the task of making a tentative effort in this respect because Moscow placed great confidence in him. However, his effort was unsuccessful. In fact, the Soviet premier's decision to withdraw his troops from Romania was the result of a talk between Khrushchev and Gheorghiu-Dej that deserves to be related because, far from being official or formal, it sounds rather like a chat between two canny old peasants. Gheorghiu-Dej told me about it one evening after supper, using the dramatic talent that made everything he said sound authentic. It happened at a bear hunt organized in honor of Khrushchev in northern Transylvania. Gheorghiu-Dej arranged with the

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hunting director to "help" Khrushchev shoot two big bears, which made the Russian proud and cheerful. Naturally, both of them were warmed by Russian vodka and Odobe~ti wine. It was Gheorghiu-Dej who broached the subject. '"Dear Nikita Sergeyevich,' I said, 'you have entrusted several tasks of great responsibility to me and I have carried them out to the best of my ability.' "'Yes, you have carried them out very proficiently indeed,' Khrushchev said. "'If things are as you say they are, I wonder why you don't trust our party!' "'How is that? I fully trust it, or I would not have relied on you.' "'Why do you need then to keep tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers here in Romania? You know how soldiers are, Nikita. They ramble over the town on Sundays, have a drink too much, get fuddled and kick up a shindy, and occasionally they get hold of a woman, even a girl, and take liberties. And the Romanians fly into a rage and swear. Whom do they swear at? Not at Vania or at Rodion but at the Red Army and the Soviet Union. Moreover, bread and meat are in short supply, and our enemies are spreading the rumor that the Soviet soldiers are to blame for it-that they eat up everything. And instead of love for the liberating Soviet Unio.n, we get an atmosphere hostile to you, and anti-Sovietism is spreading. That makes our political work very difficult and it does you harm. Why do you need all this? What's the use of keeping so many Soviet soldiers here?" "'You've given me food for thought, dear Gheorghi Afanassievich. Maybe it's not a bad idea. I was just thinking how to mend matters after that unfortunate affair in Hungary, which does not in the least suit me now, for I wished to improve our relations with the West. Yes, we blew it at the very moment when I needed a different image there. I'll talk it over with the comrades. You've given me an idea; you have, indeed!'" That was in 1958. Before long, Khrushchev telephoned GheorgiuDej to tell him the big news: He had ordered the Soviet troops withdrawn from Romania. After relating this talk with Khrushchev, Gheorgiu-Dej added: "You know what else he told me? That there should be compensation for the decision, and I should think things over and decide what I could offer in exchange. He's a devil of a bargainer, this Russian!" It was the first time in the history of the people's democracies that the Soviet bear let its prey go. Shaking off the status of a satellite state was a gradual process. The Romanian people received successive signals of "Romanianization. 11

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57

The Ministry of Education sent an internal circular stating that it was no longer compulsory to learn Russian in primary and secondary schools; French, English, German, and Italian could be studied optionally. The Zoia Kosmodemianskaia girls' high school became the Central Secondary School; the Russian Book publishing house and the Maxim Gorki Linguistic Institute were abolished. Encouraged by the popular response, Gheorgiu-Dej decided that Stalin City should revert to its original name: Bra~ov. Mihai Roller, the high-ranking official in the propaganda department who had engaged in a campaign for Russification of the Romanian language and history, was sidetracked. The Romanian Academy reasserted the Latin origin of the Romanian language; Latin-sounding letters replaced Slav-sounding ones. The streets named after Russian or Soviet personalities had their names changed (Boulevard Jdanov became Spring Boulevard). A vast operation described as the "reappraisal of the cultural heritage" was launched. Among those who were brought back into the national pantheon were the great poet Mihail Eminescu, whose works had not previously been published because of their strong anti-Russian strains; the historian Nicolae Iorga; and the critic Titu Maiorescu. The poet Tudor Arghezi, viciously criticized by Sorin Toma in Sdnteia in the early 1950s, was invited to the Central Committee and had all the honors and privileges the system had in store heaped upon him. The publication of Karl Marx's "subversive" work Notes on the Romanians under the vigilant eye of historian Andrei Otetea, member of the Academy, was a masterstroke. In that work, the founder of scientific socialism exposed tsarist Russia's unwarranted interference in Romania's independence, more particularly the annexation of Bessarabia. The manipulation of national symbols became part of the strategy of the Communist Party (and would be turned later into a state policy by Nicolae Ceau~escu). This volte-face in Romania's politics was an internal reflection of (and was becoming possible thanks to) the major shift in world politics occurring at the end of the 1950s.

The Seesaw of Class Ideology and National Strategy The generation that survived World War II lived for almost fifteen years with the image of a world divided along ideological lines. Two opposite and hostile camps, capitalism and socialism (West and East), each one tightly lined up behind its leading power (the United States and the Soviet Union), were cleft by an antagonism so bitter that a showdown seemed inevitable.

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At the end of the 1950s, rather suddenly, this straight and clear-cut picture painted in the classic academic manner with definite boundaries and precise contours turned into a dizzying configurative painting in which the boundaries were blurred while the lines intersected and overlapped each other. The shift began with Charles de Gaulle's rejection of "American hegemony" in the West and the harsh Sino-Soviet polemics in the East. It continued with a series of hitherto unthinkable events: the jointly drafted Soviet-American test-ban and nonproliferation treaties rejected by France and China; the "heretical" visit of President Richard Nixon to Beijing; the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the "brotherly armies"; the bizarre constellation in both the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 and the 1976 war in Angola-the United States and China finding themselves on one side of the fence, the USSR standing firmly on the other. Last but not least, a number of kingdoms, sheikhdoms, and emirates of the Persian Gulf, surviving from other ages, staged an oil embargo that shook some of the rich and arrogant power centers to their very foundations. Those who had become used to the idea of the two camps stood baffled and perplexed before the "big news." What was happening to this world of ours? Karl Marx had repeatedly warned against a purely linear view of history unfolding in accordance with a sort of cumulative chronology, in which one social formation (feudalism or capitalism) succeeds and supersedes another, then produces the successor that will in turn surpass it. In fact history never advances as a linear and straightforward process but rather in a contradictory way, with sharp turns and detours, advances and setbacks. Indeed, the whole capitalist era revealed the remanent force of the feudal legacy, and we witnessed a reaction of the feudal spell even in state socialism-not to mention in the current comeback from socialism to capitalism-that turned even Marx upside down. In my previous books 1 I dealt with the fundamental lacunae of Marxism: its almost exclusive focus on one type of social aggregation, namely classes, and neglect of the other, ethnicity. In fact, although the two intertwine within various types of societies, each has a different historical origin and an evolution of its own. Revolutions that brought the passing of power from one class to another did not alter the characteristics of the ethnic groups involved. The French nation remained French after its 1848 revolution; so too did the Russians, Ukrainians, and Georgians retain their ethnicity after the October 1917 revolution-and now their national resurgence is bursting with a vengeance. In examining the long cycles of human history, I have discovered a certain dialectical regularity running through all types of social forma-

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tions. Thus, modern history, starting with the French Revolution, has been marked by class conflict alternating with sharp national rivalries. I call this historical interplay the "seesaw" of class and national motive forces in international politics, for as one comes to prevail, the other goes down, diminishing its impact on a nation's foreign policies. In 1789, when the first French Revolution broke out, most of the Continent's diplomatic chancelleries had their attention focused on events in Eastern Europe: the Russian-Turkish war, the Russian-Swedish war, and so on. The class overturn triggered by the French Revolution, however, caused them to redirect their attention to Western Europe, and very soon the struggle against the bourgeois revolution became central to diplomatic activities. In 1815, the Holy Alliance rallying the tsar of Russia, the emperor of Austria, and the king of Prussia was formed to stem the revolutionary tide in Europe. Subsequently, after Napoleon's defeat, revolutionary upheavals, barricade battles, and liberation movements again dominated international relations. The contemporary epoch has also been marked by this alternation of class and national motivations. During World War I, the nationalstrategic clash between the Triple Entente and the Austro-German alliance was so sharp and absorbing that Lenin cited it as factor in the success of the Russian Revolution. However, when the Western chancelleries finally realized what the revolution was about, fourteen states intervened militarily to squelch it. World War II is a classical example of the priority gained by national motivation and the strategic factor that goes with it. The United States and Great Britain set aside their class-ideological enmity and joined the Soviet Union (which did the same thing) to fight the common threat, Hitler. In countries occupied by Germany, too, class conflicts were minimized in the name of national liberation. After the war, however, as the revolutionary process extended into Eastern Europe with the advance of the Red Army, the United States and the other Western powers countered with the containment and rollback policies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and so on. The Cold War was the virulent expression of this priority in world affairs. After the halt of the revolutionary wave in Europe, the nationalist resurgence of the newly independent states pervaded world politics, while the superpowers' joint policy of nuclear monopoly stirred up the reaction of France and China. The national-strategic motive force again went to the top, and this is the underlying reason why bizarre partnerships and coalitions crosscut the ideological lines. (The collapse of the communist system and the elimination of the class-ideological East-West conflict has now triggered a powerful nationalist ex-

a

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plosion in the East, but this current phenomenon lies outside the scope of this book.)

Stalinist Desatellitization I contend that in postwar Europe the relations of the superpowers with their partners in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe respectively bore a certain resemblance. Immediately after the war, both the Western and the Eastern nations.were tightly aligned behind their respective leaders, the United States and the USSR. The position of the two was similar: undisputed authority, monopoly in the formulation of policy and strategy, complete subordination to the goals set in Washington and Moscow. As national-strategic reasons prevailed over ideology in East and West, nations gaining strength within both alliances began to assert themselves and promote national interests, gradually demanding a say in the formulation of policies and military doctrines. In the West, de Gaulle's France led the way toward political emancipation, a move followed by West Germany's Ostpolitik. In the East, the trend was reflected in such events as the 1956 upheavals in Hungary and Poland, later in Romania's independent stance, and in the 1968 Prague Spring. The phenomenon was felt to be stronger in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, where the asymmetric structure of the USSR's power exceeded by far that of all its allies combined. To be sure, the social content of national self-assertion differed in the two blocs. In the East, what has been wrongly called in Western literature "liberalization" was actually the attempt of local leaders to remake socialism in their own way, according to national conditions and political tradition. One must recall that in the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union was the dominant power in the region, enjoying the glory of being the liberator from Nazi oppression. To both the Soviet Communist Party and the local communist parties of Eastern Europe, the mechanical adoption of the Soviet model seemed the best and safest course, particularly in view of the vigorous assault the Western powers mounted to disrupt and destabilize by subversion, sabotage, and overwhelming economic and financial means the infant and fragile communist regimes. Whereas international conditions in the wake of the war were conducive to subordination within the bloc and to close imitation of the Soviet model, they later favored the reverse trend-namely, self-assertion of national forces, emphasis on national equality and cultural identity, and rejection of forms and methods in building socialism that were ill-suited to the given nation. In Romania, where servile mimicry had led leaders to go so far as to declare the Romanian language and culture chiefly Slav, the country's Latin heritage

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61

was restored to recognition. The Prague Spring was essentially a drive to reshape socialism consonant to the tradition of a nation that had been an advanced political democracy before the revolution; such a nation could hardly assimilate the Soviet model that had been tailored in a backward peasant country lacking any democratic tradition. Nationalism had negative connotations in both Washington and Moscow, but the moment it was monitored in the rival camp as a disruptive force, the pejorative adjectives were suddenly replaced by terms of praise and encouragement. De Gaulle was scorned in Washington and praised in Moscow, and so was Romania in reverse. This is not to say that class ideology and interests vanished altogether in policymaking. Even de Gaulle, when he perceived the Cuban missile crisis as a test of power threatening the system, was the first to assure President John F. Kennedy of French support. In Romania also, the ideological basis of the regime and the political dictatorial system were stubbornly maintained. What we experienced was in fact a Stalinist desatellitization.

Down with Economic and Military Integration! Rejection of Khrushchev's plans for economic integration of the member countries of the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was a crucial moment in the assertion of Romania's independent position. In 1961, Khrushchev had launched the idea of "specialization" within the organization: The USSR, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia were to continue to be industrialized, while such countries as Romania and Bulgaria were to stress development of farming. A Comecon supranational institution was to monitor this division of labor. Naturally, the idea was supported by East Germany and Czechoslovakia; Poland and Hungary wavered and expressed reservations; and Bulgaria submissively fell into line with Moscow, as usual. At the 1963 Comecon summit conference in Moscow, Gheorghiu-Dej resolutely rejected the project, arguing against the transformation of the country into a farming appendage as well as against the infringement of the principle of national independence and sovereignty. The Poles and the Hungarians supported him, and the conference ended with Romania carrying the day. In 1964, Khrushchev made a new attempt to subordinate the East European countries. He sent to all Warsaw Treaty members a proposal for integrating the bulk of their military forces under a single command-naturally, a Soviet command-and standardizing the armament and even the uniforms and the officers' ranks in order to increase the Warsaw Pact's "fighting power."

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National Backlash

This happened at the beginning of the year. In accordance with an established custom, the members of the Romanian Politburo were spending the first two weeks after the New Year in the winter resorts up in the Carpathian Mountains. I was urgently summoned by phone to come to Timi~, where Gheorghiu-Dej resided in an enclave enclosed by a high fence painted dark red, within which were two more villas housing Ion Gheorghe Maurer and Chivu Stoica. In the evening, Gheorghiu-Dej showed me Khrushchev's memorandum and told me that the answer to be drawn up should be a "brief" and "stiff" rejection of the proposal. He added that he had appointed a small committee (it included Maurer, Bodnara~, and Ceau~escu) to look over the draft reply and determine it was adequate before he convened a meeting of the Politburo to discuss and approve it. No sooner said than done! I well remember the Politburo meeting. The members were all seated around a solid wooden table, some five meters long, with the "boss" at the head. Gheorghiu-Dej was at the peak of his popularity in those years. The Romanian economy had taken wing after a period of great suffering and privation for the population. The compulsory quota, which obliged the peasants to sell the bulk of their output for next to nothing, had been done away with; there was an abundance of food; ration cards were a thing of the past; and there was even a relaxation in the intensive work system in the party and the state machinery. The Secretariat of the Central Committee had sent a circular recommending that all cadres organize their work within an eight-hour limit, and at a conference with the party militants, Gheorghiu-Dej said that the time had come to attend to our families, read a book, and watch television programs. And he poked fun, in his own particular way, at those who sought to replace efficiency by overtime work stretching far into the night. "Those who can't solve problems by eight hours' work are not likely to do it in twenty hours," he said. During the same interval of internal political relaxation (1962-1965), some 12,750 prisoners (according to official figures) were released from camps and prisons, and personalities of the scientific and cultural sectors hitherto ignored or blacklisted were rehabilitated. Consequently, Gheorghiu-Dej was very much in command when the Politburo met. He opened the meeting with a brief summary of the agenda and of the essentials in Khrushchev's letter, after which he said: "Read the text, Tache." I read as slowly as possible and even repeated the main sentences so that the Politburo members could memorize the point. Now and then I would look up at Gheorghiu-Dej because his mobile and expressive face revealed his reactions. He was pulling a wry expression, which meant he was not pleased. Of course, I was not the only keen observer

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in the room; they were all looking at him because they had learned to guess his thoughts from the features of his face and from the look in his eyes. When I had finished reading, he repeated his favorite sentence: "Is it really necessary to whirl the sword of Damocles around in the air?"-and he imitated the movement of a cowboy whirling his lasso in order to catch a running cow. Some of the Politburo members immediately had their names put down in order to take the floor. They knew the text had to be criticized, to be found fault with, for they had read "the party line" in the boss's face. His authority was undisputed at the time. The first to speak was Borila, who was displeased with the "anti-Soviet" turn of recent years anyway. Next came Draghici, equally unhappy with the new situation. Taking his bearings on the spot, Maurer, who had approved the text, remarked that it was "too violent" and might antagonize Khrushchev: There was no point in doing that. Bodnara~ mentioned that it was only "a draft" and could be improved. Ceau~escu alone said, though in a rather peevish tone: "Comrades, I have approved the text and I stick to my opinion that it is a good text, such as it is!" All the others raised quite a few objections, either to the ideas or to the form of the text. The "old man" (as we called Gheorghiu-Dej among ourselves) looked at me. I had once recommended he change his method of sending the draft of a party document to all Politburo members for remarks to be inserted subsequently in the text because some of the remarks might be contradictory and a document should be consistent-it should be a compact, unitary whole. Gheorghiu would store such ideas, and thereafter, whenever controversies arose, he often sought my opinion before drawing a final conclusion. I was just back from the United Nations, where I had undergone systematic training in such debates. While listening to the members of the Politburo, I took notes, for I knew that soon it would be my turn to speak. When it was, I made three points: First, it was now or never. If we didn't reject the proposal right then, it would be put into practice, and once our army had been integrated, nothing could be done. Second, the rejection should be firm and categorical; otherwise Khrushchev would sense our weakness and would not take us seriously. Third, the international situation and the position of the USSR (compelled to withdraw from Cuba) were such that Khrushchev could not act against us and would have to swallow the bitter pill. When I finished, I looked at my watch. I had spoken for fifteen minutes-longer than had any of the members of the Politburo, which made me uneasy. There followed a moment's silence, after which Gheorgiu-Dej said: "Yes, there is something in what has been said here. To conclude, I

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would say that Maurer and Ceau§escu should once again look at the text and see whether it might be somewhat improved, but generally it should remain as it is-ideas and tone both. The meeting is adjourned." At last I could breathe freely. It was all over. Everybody went home, while I came off with flying colors. It was a lovely winter day. Everything, as the song says, was "going my way." The snow was more than a meter high, and the whole scenery was superbly white. Once back in my villa, I lit the fire and lay on a couch, enjoying the triumph. But somebody knocked on the door. It was Ceau§escu's bodyguard: "Comrade Ceau§escu invites you to dinner tonight. At about seven o'clock." I was flabbergasted, for I knew there was no love lost between us. Several times in the corridors of the Central Committee he had passed without noticing me, and I knew why! What could have gotten into him? I went to his villa at 7:00 p.m. Even before I removed my coat, he came to me and said: "Do you know why I invited you? I liked the way you stuck to your view. You heard Maurer and Bodnara§, as if they had nothing to do with the text. They just forgot they approved it. No sooner had Gheorghiu-Dej wrinkled his nose than they rushed to dance to his tune." Ceau§escu still stammered a little (he got over it altogether not long afterward, apparently by means of an operation). What could I say? I remained silent. Ceau§escu said to the bodyguard. "Boy, will you bring a bottle of that old plum brandy to celebrate our victory over political cowardice?" I thus realized it had been a political victory for him. He felt stronger because he had been the only member of the Politburo who stuck to his guns, and in the end everybody saw he was right: a personal triumph. I consequently had to be rewarded-I had helped him win. That was how his mind worked as he was making his way to the top. Gheorghiu-Dej was known to be ill with cancer and his days were numbered, while Ceau§escu was already number two in the party. As organizational director, he had the entire organizational structure of the party under control.

Nikita Khrushchev: Smart but Boorish Nikita Khrushchev was very intelligent but equally boorish. He had been at loggerheads with Gheorghiu-Dej long before the watershed year of 1964. I realized it in 1960, when the two came to the UN session on the S.S. Baltica. I was Romania's UN ambassador and witnessed a number of fairly violent clashes between them.

65

The Romanian delegation assembles before the opening meeting of the 1960 UN session. Front row, from left: President Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Ambassador Silviu Brucan, and Politburo members Leonte Rautu and ~tefan Voitec. (Photo from United Nations. Used by permission.)

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Gheorghiu-Dej told me that at a meeting on the Baltica all communist leaders had agreed among themselves that in light of the dangerous tension in East-West relations, efforts should be made at the United Nations to bring about a relaxation in the Cold War, thus proving to the American people that the communist countries wanted peace and understanding. But in New York Khrushchev lost his selfcontrol and made provocative statements to the press. He worked himself up and, together with Fidel Castro, delivered speeches in Harlem that sounded like instigations to a confrontation. At the UN session he took off his shoe and struck the bench in front of him to show his contempt for the organization. When I asked him why he did it, he replied he was sorry the shoe had no spikes! Gheorghiu-Dej decided to invite the communist leaders to lunch to discuss the issue. It was a hearty meal. When coffee was served, he rose to speak, recalling the understanding on the Baltica and the wise decision made there to ease the tension but noting that the situation created in New York was explosive. He concluded by saying they should revert to the decision made on the Baltica and observe it, for a great responsibility was incumbent on them: "We are the real guarantors of peace," he said. "What will the American people think when they see us getting so excited and ready to wrangle?" Khrushchev felt the thrust and flew into a temper at first, laying the blame on the American hosts and their lack of hospitality. But later he realized his position was shaky and said he agreed with Gheorghiu-Dej that calm and tactfulness were needed, if not for those ruling America, at least for the American people. But his boorishness was fully displayed when he visited Romania in June 1962. I accompanied him on the train and on his visit to various plants, and I remember the embarrassing scene at the locomotive plant in Craiova. The workers there had been toiling day and night to build an elegant miniature of a 2, 100-horsepower diesel electric locomotive-their pride; no such equipment existed in the USSR. When they offered it to Khrushchev, he simply turned his back on them and set off in the other direction. The workers were offended-they did not know what to think. One of them, particularly emotional, felt like crying; but the foreman, a giant of a fellow over six feet tall, mumbled an outrageous curse of a type plentiful in Romania. In truth, that seemed to me the right reaction. Khrushchev was impulsive and unable to control himself. As far as Romania's industrialization was concerned, his hostile reaction easily took an aggressive turn. I read the memoirs he wrote after he was sacked. Once out of power, Khrushchev was altogether a different person.

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Big Brother in a Fix The most important document asserting the independence of communist Romania was, and still is, the statement of the April 1964 plenum. I worked on it for nearly two months, and Gheorghiu-Dej read and reread it at least ten times before it assumed its final form. The ideological conflict between China and the Soviet Union was the most problematical element to put to writing, for we had to make it clear that our position was a matter of principle and not a preference to one or the other. In fact, the whole issue of the Sino-Soviet conflict was conceived as a premise of the key paragraph of the document: Bearing in mind the diversity of conditions in which socialist construction takes place in various parts of the world, there is not, nor can there be, any unique pattern and recipe; no one can decide what is and what is not correct for other countries and parties. It is up to every Marxist-Leninist party, it is a sovereign right of each socialist state, to elaborate, choose, or change the forms and methods of socialist construction. There does not and cannot exist a "parent" party and a "son" party, or "superior" parties and "subordinate" parties. No party has, or can have, a privileged place, or can impose its line and opinions on other parties.

It was the first time the principles Khrushchev set forth as a foundation for peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism were applied to the relations among socialist countries and communist parties-observance of national independence and sovereignty, equality in rights, mutual benefits, noninterference in internal affairs, and territorial integrity. Added to these were comradely mutual aid and the principles of socialist internationalism. In brief, Moscow was called upon to apply in its relations with the socialist countries what it was advocating for international relations generally. Under the circumstances prevailing at the time, the April 1964 plenum statement was tantamount to a revolution in the camp of world socialism. Big Brother was helpless, especially because the political crisis that had cropped up in the Kremlin ended in the removal of Khrushchev from power. In Bucharest in the meantime, Gheorghiu-Dej, confident of his power, sent a delegation headed by Bodnara~ and Ceau~escu to Beijing with the assignment to mediate between the two great powers of the communist world.

Reminiscences About Gheorghiu-Dej In the autumn of 1962 I was in Moscow, waiting for the return of a state delegation headed by Gheorghiu-Dej from a visit to Indonesia.

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The Soviet ambassador in Djakarta had transmitted to Gheorghiu-Dej Khrushchev's invitation to stop in Moscow for an important and urgent matter. When Gheorghiu-Dej returned to the hotel from the Kremlin, where Khrushchev had told him about the Soviet rockets in Cuba, he cried out: "The man is stark mad. He might blow up the world!" And he added: "And we ourselves in Romania might find ourselves at war with the West without having been consulted, without being aware of it. The commander of the Warsaw Treaty forces is a Soviet marshal; if he is ordered by Khrushchev, he will drag us to follow this madman. I told Nikita Sereyevich what the Germans said after the war: "Without us!" I recalled then that in Paris in 1960, following a violent exchange of accusations between Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower after the American U-2 espionage plane was shot down in Soviet territory, Eisenhower had ordered the American NATO commander to put NATO troops in a state of alarm. Realizing that France might be involved in a war without having been consulted, de Gaulle decided to remove the French troops from the NATO structure. "That's what we also must do," Gheorghiu-Dej commented.

* * * One evening during the 1962 Moscow visit, the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, who had become Gheorghiu-Dej's friend long before, came to supper. It was a treat, not only gastronomic but also intellectual, for the dialogue between the two was captivating. Ehrenburg had just returned from a visit to Bucharest, where he felt quite comfortable among the Romanian intelligentsia, and knew perfectly well the places where the Bucharest bohemia met. On his first postwar visit he had liked the Parisian atmosphere at the Cap~a cafe immensely, and he now told Gheorghiu-Dej: "You've turned Cap~a into a stolovaya [factory canteen]. There is no place left for a good chat in Bucharest. And, what is worse, I was told that Papacostea, the head of the restaurantwho is a gastronomic genius-was put in prison. What's going on over there, Comrade Gheorghiu?" Gheorghiu-Dej immediately told me to remind him of it all when we got home. When I telephoned in Bucharest, he told me he had already ordered Papacostea to be released and reinstated in his office. The next day I had dinner at Cap~a, and the Greek fellow, charming as usual, was directing the whole show. *

*

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One of Gheorghiu-Dej's impressive characteristics was his clearsightedness in assessing those he worked with. One night we were having our usual glass of red wine after supper-I think he was on his second bottle-when Gheorghiu-Dej gave me a strange look that I knew would be followed by "big news." He said: "Listen to me, Chivu is a blockhead." I was taken aback and remained speechless. Like any drinker who has had a drop too much, Gheorghiu-Dej felt the urge of getting my reaction, so he repeated: "Did you hear what I said, man, Chivu Stoica is a blockhead!" I could no longer control myself-it was the second bottle for me as well-and retorted: "If he's a blockhead, why did you make a prime minister of him?" It was he who was taken aback this time. After a moment's silence, he said: "Don't take it literally, man, for he's a blockhead of a special kind. If I tell him to pass his bullet head through the wall, he will do it. That's why I made a prime minister of him." Gheorghiu didn't handle Chivu Stoica with kid gloves. He once summoned me to tell me I was to accompany Chivu Stoica to Moscow to the Warsaw Treaty session, and he asked me to prepare the statement of the Romanian government. Then he summoned Stoica and said to him while I was still there: "Tache will go with you to Moscow. I told him how he should draw up our statement. Don't try to be smart and give him directions. He knows perfectly well what you have to say there. Do you hear me?" Chivu Stoica assented, while I was ready to sink into the earth for shame: My God, here stood the prime minister of Romania. Another time, during the de-Russification drive, after he witnessed a clash between me and Rautu regarding the wording in a party document, I again saw that arch look in Gheorghiu-Dej's eyes. He said: "Lonea [Rautu] finds himself in a predicament. He must prove to us that neither is he a Jew nor that he has Russian cultural training. That is why he out-herods Herod." Gheorghiu-Dej had a most perceptive mind and characterized Rautu well. Indeed, in his capacity as propaganda director, Rautu started appointing people with the most resounding Romanian names-true-born Romanians-after systematically dismissing all the Jews in his department. With regard to his second handicap, he formerly spoke fluent Russian to Soviet visitors and was very proud of that, but shifted to addressing them through an interpreter. He would even go as far as pretending not to understand Russian and ask the interpreter to translate every word.

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*

*

*

One New Year's Eve-after midnight, when hard liquor had loosened everybody's inhibitions-I witnessed an extraordinary scene during a select social party at the Central Committee. Gheorghiu-Dej and Emil Bodnara~, both of them in their cups, began to talk Yiddish, doing their level best to produce the most genuine accent and adding typical ghetto gestures and mimicry. They had us all in stitches with laughter, and the two protagonists, seeing the effect of their performance, vied with each in making up ludicrous dialogue. Gheorghiu-Dej had spent his childhood in the Jewish suburb of Moine~ti, and Bodnara~ also had grown up among the Jews of Bukovina. As both of them had a talent for languages, the show was altogether stunning. I must confess they were using words I did not know, as my parents seldom spoke Yiddish in the family.

* * * In November 1963 I was in Belgrade, accompanying the party and state delegation headed by Gheorghiu-Dej. After he had made peace with Tito, the latter invited a Romanian delegation to Belgrade in order to show his appreciation of the Romanian party's independent position toward the Soviet Union and of the part Gheorghiu-Dej played in arranging Khrushchev's reconciliation visit to Belgrade after Stalin's death. The program was very special, and the official delegation was housed in the sumptuous Karageorgevich Palace. Gheorghiu-Dej was the first party or state leader to be invited to address the Vecha (the Yugoslav parliament). I had prepared the text in Bucharest; there had been protracted discussions on it in the Politburo, which had gone through it paragraph by paragraph. On the eve of the extraordinary session of the Vecha, Gheorghiu-Dej and the delegation attended a ballet show at the Belgrade Opera and then had supper with the most beautiful ballerinas, as Tito had arranged. Marshal Tito was a great charmer. After every meeting with him, I realized how he succeeded in influencing the members of our delegation by using a wide range of means-from political or economic arguments to ballerinas. And our leaders were doubtlessly devoted to Marx's famous admission: "Nothing human is alien to me." They returned after midnight-delighted and properly fuddled, having drunk only French champagne. Gheorghiu-Dej alone, according to an iron rule, was determined to reread the text on the eve of its delivery and had sent word that I should await him. I was dozing in an armchair when he woke me up. We all sat down at a table and I began to read. He let me read until I got to a passage mentioning the Red

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Army and the decisive part the USSR played in World War II. He stopped me: "What, is it necessary to say that here, in Belgrade?" The . other members of the delegation were tired and eager to go to bed, so they cried out: "Let's strike that out, Comrade Gheorghiu-Dej; let's do that!" But the old man was looking at me. So I reminded him that the Politburo had deemed the paragraph absolutely essential in order to mark our party's different view on the matter. (The Yugoslav leadership never mentioned the Red Army's role in liberating Eastern Europe.) And I added: "But I'll strike it out if you decide so, although I do not think we should copy their view." Gheorghiu grew livid with fury and shouted: "Look at him, he is trying to teach me a lesson!" and he left in anger and went to bed. I went to Europa Hotel to get some sleep too. The telephone rang at seven o'clock in the morning. It was the boss's bodyguard, who said: "Comrade Gheorghiu-Dej says you should come to the palace immediately. I have sent a black Mercedes to bring you over." I was still drowsy and somewhat scared. I took a shower, dressed quickly, and went downstairs. The Mercedes was already there. The driver sped through the streets, so I reached the palace in ten minutes. When I entered Gheorghiu-Dej's apartment and saw him pacing to and fro in his pajamas, as he used to do in his prison cell, my heart sank. There was no reply to my "Good morning, Comrade GheorgiuDej." I stood there, counting the ten steps he was taking up and down the room with mathematical precision. Suddenly he stopped and, without looking at me, said in a rather forced tone: "I have reread the text and have found that you have not changed anything." After a pause, he added briefly: "Good, it was the right thing to do!" and he left the room. That was not the first time I took issue with him, through I tried to do it in the most considerate terms. He would fly into a rage at first, for he was a strong man, but in the end he would have second thoughts. Once he said: "You shall do what I tell you to do!" The day after, he telephoned: "Do you know? I've thought it over; you were right after all." He could listen and could accept having around people who did not kowtow. But they had to be party men or "fellow travelers." He got on very well with Petru Groza, and for a time he worked hand in hand with Gheorghe !atarescu, formerly a National Liberal prime minister, but that was only as long as they submitted to the objectives of the Communist Party. He was not so forgiving with opponents of the party and of socialism, whom he considered "class enemies" and dealt roughly with.

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The most abominable crime Gheorghiu-Dej committed was the arrest in 1954 of Lucretiu Patra~canu, the Stalinist-type inquiry he was submitted to, and the death sentence that followed. I knew Patra~canu well and often worked with him. He was a genuine patriot; he was organically Romanian. Even had I been offered proof that he had been bought by Western imperialism, I would not have believed it. Why would he do such a thing? He had been born in a well-to-do family; he had never lived in want and always had plenty of money. Truly, a worker, even one as intelligent as Gheorghiu-Dej, could not understand that a man like Patra~canu could never turn traitor for money. That is where the class limits operate to make a worker unable to understand the sophisticated motivations of an intellectual. I knew that during the Paris peace conference both Lucretiu Patra~canu and Belu Zilber, exasperated by the exaggerated Soviet demands for war reparations from Romania, had been in touch with Western delegations to persuade them not to join in demands that would condemn Romania to servitude. (They were unsuccessful because neither man knew at that time that Romania's fate had been decided long ago by the Churchill-Stalin deal.) But for Gheorghiu-Dej to make the leap from that to incriminating Patra~canu of being a spy in the service of imperialism was a long way to go. About the same thing may be said about the implication in the lawsuit of ethnographer Harry Brauner, lawyer Petre Pandrea, painter Lena Constante, and engineer I. Calmanovici-the latter a rich businessman and an idealist who cut a better figure at the inquiry than all the others and who eventually committed suicide. The truth is that Patra~canu's crime was to make claim to the party leadership, and as I have already said, Gheorgiu-Dej was ruthless with those who challenged him. Patra~canu was consequently executed in haste, barely two days after the sentence was passed: He was shot from behind-symbolically. That is how power turned a decent and generous man into a cruel and egocentric leader ready to commit any crime for his own end.

My Turning Point The year 1956 brought not only the Hungarian revolution but also Khrushchev's secret report to the twentieth congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Fortunately, I was in Washington at the time and was able to study that report and discuss it with my American friends, which my comrades at home could not do. I was all the time aware of this discrepancy, and I think I had learned something from Gheorghiu-Dej in this respect-namely, to proceed

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"slowly, gradually, most tactfully, without haste." I should add that this was the iron rule of survival in a communist party, so that at the right moment one might act and strike with political efficiency. Yes, politics has always been, and still is, the art of the possible, of feasibility. For me, the shock was violent and bewildering: The Stalinist within me was fatally wounded. I had already read a number of books exposing Stalin's crimes, but I always found motivations and extenuating circumstances for his decisions. However, when I was confronted with that horrifying accumulation of violence and terror, which was proof of medieval tactics (or as Marx said, oriental despotism), aimed not so much at the "class enemy" as at the closest comrades fighting for the same ideas (nearly two-thirds of the members of the CPSU's Central Committee were killed or deported by Stalin's order), I realized he was one of the fiercest and most cynical criminals in history. Moreover, my training as a social scientist made me soon realize that for such a man to be able to rise to and maintain his position for such a long time at the head of the party and the Soviet state, that meant that there was something basically wrong-something rotten in the system itself. I was tormented and bewildered and never at peace. But there was something just as disturbing: Stalin's villainy and crimes were disclosed and exposed by the new party leader before a party congress, and that gave me some hope that communism could reform and mend its ways. Nevertheless, I realized that what was needed was a general overhaul. I was consequently happy when Gheorghiu-Dej summoned me back to Bucharest to lend a hand in the strategy whereby we were to distance ourselves from the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, his new trend in politics was determined by what he had seen in Budapest rather than by what was happening in Moscow. According to him, the de-Sovietization drive was not to include de-Stalinization. On the contrary, to a certain extent de-Sovietization was a self-defense line or, better said, a strategy to save the Stalinist political system (a strategy that became even more apparent under Ceau~escu). De-Sovietization was meant to save Stalinism and not to mend or liberalize it, as Khrushchev was trying to do in the Soviet Union. Consequently, the Soviet and Romanian paths diverged. A "thaw" took place in the Soviet Union, as heralded by Ilya Ehrenburg in a novel. After two decades of optimistic official reports on the success "of the most advanced agriculture in the world," the cosmetic look was suddenly repudiated by Khrushchev's candid admission that the farming output was in many respects below that of tsarist Russia. Whereas the artists and writers denigrated or killed under Stalin were rehabili-

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tated, Gheorghiu-Dej declared in Bucharest: "We need not rehabilitate anyone." He was proud that he had held out against Stalin's pressures to organize show trials in Romania. At the same time, he organized meetings with writers and artists to criticize those who departed from the tenets of "socialist realism." Gheorghiu-Dej repeatedly told me that Khrushchev's secret report was a major political mistake, detrimental to Marxist-Leninist ideology. He had mixed feelings about the Soviet leader: On the one hand, he acknowledged his merit in initiating a detente policy with the United States and in undertaking important initiatives on the issue of general and complete disarmament; on the other hand, he kept pointing out that Khrushchev's activities both inside and outside the country were adventurous and ill-timed. "It's dangerous that a man who can't control his nerves should be at the head of the Soviet Union, 11 he would say. When I came home in 1962, I found there was no longer the same direct communion between us. I was no longer invited to write party documents; Dej had found another team to work with and only called me on foreign policy matters or when he went abroad. I must admit, however, that he gave me a free hand at the state Radio-Television Service and defended me against those who sharply criticized the programs I initiated. On my return home, he had proposed I join the Foreign Affairs Ministry as state minister, but I refused categorically, arguing that I was not a good diplomat and did not like a post in which I could not state my views. He saw my point and agreed. About a month later, he summoned me to tell me that a television service should be organized in Romania to educate the people but at the same time to offer something entertaining; he felt my seven years spent in the United States made me the right man to organize such a thing in Romania. The idea appealed to me, but pointed out that I could accept only if I was left alone to organize television as I thought fit. I did not want inexperienced people, who thought they knew all the ropes because they held an important post, poking their noses into it. He agreed. At the first meeting we had to examine the activity of the Radio-Television Service, I said I had received five telephone calls from members of the Politburo: Two of them congratulated me, considering the programs to be most instructive as well as captivating, while three protested my putting "women with bare buttocks" on the screen, or featuring Mircea Cri~an and Amza Pellea in political satires "poking fun at the party line," or airing "The Saint" television series, which corrupted the youth, inciting them to crime. I then asked: "Whose advice am I to follow, Comrade Gheorghiu-Dej?" His answer was: "Go your own way,

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on your own responsibility, but mind you don't make mistakes too big, for slight mistakes you will inevitably make." And he told everyone to leave me alone-"Tache knows what he is doing." Henceforth, I followed his advice, even when the censor demanded at dress rehearsal that I leave out a political satire couplet, a modern ballet, or a scene featuring a woman walking about in a bikini. Whenever Gheorghiu-Dej came to New York for a UN session, he liked to watch the Sunday political programs-"Face the Nation" or "Meet the Press" as well as the roundtable discussions. I translated every word of it, and he was immensely interested. But he was amazed that people who criticized and even abused the government were invited to speak on television. I explained to him that apolitical system was like any machine that needed safety valves for escape of steam to avoid an explosion. He seemed to understand the necessity of it in the West, but never went so far as to accept that we, too, needed it in Romania.

6

The Two Faces of Communist Society

How can anyone explain the fact that great and noble spirits of our century, like Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse, Heinrich Mann and Bertolt Brecht, Pablo Picasso and Pablo Casals, Frederic Joliot-Curie and John Bernal-their names are legion-expressed admiration for communist society and even rushed to defend it whenever it was criticized or threatened? The truth is that communist society had two faces, while they saw only one of them. The first was a public face, a visible one, inspired by lofty human values and bolstered by a highly persuasive propaganda machinery and modern techniques of mass media; it was based on Marxist-Leninist ideology in the social sphere and socialist realism in literature and arts. The whole exercise endeavored and actually managed to convey a social image-idyllic in its simplicity-if not of the present society doomed to poverty by the dominant, highly developed, and rich West, then of a glorious future that was being built tenaciously, by all means, in the East. The other face was hidden, veiled, well covered and disguised, known to very few people, in keeping with the rules of conspiracy. It was kept as far as possible from foreign visitors and even from natives, with extraordinary effectiveness, even when millions of people were involved. As Nikita Khrushchev revealed the gruesome proportions of the genocide perpetrated by Stalin, surprise was as great as horror-and not only abroad but also at home in the USSR. Naturally, the families of those tortured or killed knew what was going on, but they were afraid to speak up; moreover, they seemed to be isolated from the rest of society by a Soviet wall as impenetrable as the Chinese one. People-even when they did learn something-could hardly believe what they 77

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heard; they viewed it as practically impossible. When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's first book was published during the Khrushchev thaw, Soviet newspapers were virtually flooded with hundreds of thousands of letters protesting the defamation of Soviet society. Similar reactions occurred in Romania when revelations appeared about the hidden face of our society.

The Nice and Kind Face During World War II, communists in Romania had been but few in number, about 1,000. My party card was number 430. Many were in prison or concentration camps, while the risk outside prison was very high. There was no joking with the fascist security police or with the Gestapo under a state of war. Very few indeed dared face the tortures of an interrogation or the firing squad, for no one could expect the result to be different. But on 23 August 1944, the political-moral force of the communists was immense, precisely because of the heroic aura that surrounded them, while in political terms they rode on a propitious wave: the liberating offensive of the Red Army, acknowledged all over the world as the decisive factor in defeating the Hitlerite beast. I saw with my own eyes how, from one demonstration to another, the mass of people answering the Romanian Communist Party's calls increased by scores of thousands and then by hundreds of thousands. They did not know much either about the party or its program, while of Marx and Engels they had not even heard. I remember a march in October 1944 in which many of the demonstrators wore peasant sandals, if they were not indeed barefoot; a worker from the Vulcan enterprise in Bucharest was carrying a placard with Karl Marx's portrait, while another one behind him trod on his foot whenever the column paused in its march. The hurt one reacted violently: "If you keep trampling upon my feet, I'll hit you with this Iorga!" (the name of a famous Romanian historian, equally bearded)-and he threatened the man with the portrait of Marx. At this time we used to celebrate even anniversaries of classical Marxist works. At one such event held at the Trade Union Theater on Lipscani Street in Bucharest, communist leader Gheorghe Apostol was to speak on Lenin's philosophical work Materialism and Empiric Criticism. Because the hall was far from packed, it was filled with the "strategic reserve": two truckfuls of workers from the Malaxa works. When Apostol, in the typical agitational tradition, described Lenin's fierce struggle against philosophers holding different opinions, the lathe and milling-machine operators in heavy industry-the very pivot of

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the Romanian economy-started shouting at the top of their voices: "Down with Mach and Avenarius! Shame on Mach and Avenarius!" and a standing ovation followed. Times were hard. The war required heavy sacrifices. The Hitlerites had drained the country's riches, carrying Romania's cereals to the battlefield to feed the Wehrmacht, while Romania's cattle, swine, and poultry had been systematically shipped off to Germany. Now all basic foods were rationed; Romanians were entitled to only about ten ounces of bread or maize flour a day and half a pound of meat per week. Nevertheless, the slogan "Everything for the front" was highly popular, as this time the Romanian army was fighting for a just cause: liberation of Transylvania (mutilated by the 1940 Vienna diktat) and the participation in the war of the United Nations alongside the Red Army to crush Hitler. In the Hungarian puszta and in the mountains of Czechoslovakia, Romanian soldiers performed heroic acts praised throughout the civilized world and were welcomed as liberators in Budapest and Bratislava. The newspapers in the mid-1940s were like trumpets calling people to fierce battles and great deeds. And the people responded in a massive collective effort to rejuvenate the country, as a few examples illustrate: • When Gheorghiu-Dej went to the Jiu Valley, the miners complained that their children had only potatoes as their meal. Making a symbolic gesture, Gheorghiu-Dej took a deep breath, pulled his belly in, and fastened his trouser belt tighter. The miners got the message and within less than six months doubled the coal output. The message was received by the entire nation, and people set to work with grim determination. The wave of social action overwhelmed the negativist stance of the opposition parties. The communists had taken over the political initiative. • Under the headline "Fighting Against Nature and Hardships, Thousands of Hardworking Arms Wrest the Bread of the Many from the Danube's Whims," a reporter dramatically described the toil of people who had won the heroic battle against the river: In front of us there is now a huge dike, and an old peasant says: "For years on end we have been faced with ruthless floods. Particularly in 1942, there was a whole sea covering the ground as far as the eye could see. All houses were flooded. For weeks on end, people and cattle and other animals were shelterless, exposed in the fields. But now, mobilized by the Communist Party, we have set to work and have raised this five-kilometer-long dike by about three feet above the level of the waters of 1942. Its

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crest is six meters wide. Yes, now, sheltered by this dike, there is a new life in our village!"

• Three days later, Sdnteia announced triumphantly: "The railway workers have broken the record: They have rebuilt all the railway lines in Moldavia." As Soviet experts stated, the Romanian railway workers surpassed even the Stakhanovites in the USSR. The operations scheduled over eight days were performed in barely two and a half, while the second stage scheduled over seven days was completed in forty-four hours. Naturally enough, the minister of transport and communication was Gheorghiu-Dej. • The 1946 platform of the bloc of democratic parties contained promises to ensure "free and compulsory elementary education and unitary gymnasium education," and to grant "facilities for high school and university studies to skilled and talented sons and daughters of workers, peasants, and civil servants deprived of material means, through grants, scholarships, refectories, and hostels." Free education was generalized gradually, and hundreds of thousands of engineers, agronomists, physicians, and scientists benefitted from education reform. Never before had any Romanian worker or peasant with three or four children seen all of them become engineers or agronomists, doctors or scientists. • Internationalism acquired great force. During this period thousands of interethnic marriages united Romanians and Jews or Romanians and Magyars, while a great number of students sent to universities in Moscow and Leningrad returned with Russian wives. • In October 1945, Romania had the shameful tally of 4.2 million illiterate people (1.9 million men and 2.3 million women). If added to this figure are those who had not even finished elementary studies, an appalling proportion (60 percent) of the population could not write or even read properly. Thus, the literacy campaign was unfolded like a military offensive, and from the very first days university professors, academicians, and famous scientists symbolically inaugurated literacy schools in the villages. I saw a peasant, eighty-two years old, chalking on the blackboard the first letters of the alphabet. I was accompanying a delegation from Britain of members of Parliament, and I saw tears in the eyes of some of them. On the whole, within five or six years all illiterate Romanians learned to read and write. • The campaign to relieve drought-stricken areas was unleashed in August 1946: "Transylvanian workers offer fifty-eight wagonloads of food, clothes, and building materials for Moldavia; railway workers in Craiova work fifteen hours overtime to relieve

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people affected by the drought." It was a tremendous action of deep human solidarity, on the national and international scales, as Romanian society had never experienced. Scores of orphans found adoptive parents. My wife and I adopted two boys, ages one and two. • Newspapers heralded: "The Bumbe~ti-Livezeni railway-a 31-kilometer long tunnel with just a few tracks in the open. 2,500 workers and technicians drill through the mountains and conquer the abrupt rocks yard by yard." Gradually, the work changed into a great building site of the youth. In those years, scores of thousands of young people went to the building sites, plunging into a national construction campaign without precedent in Romania. Later in the industrialization drive factories were built in the poorest and most backward areas of the country. One major effort was to launch production of tractors in Romania; it was a genuine national holiday when the first made-in-Romania tractors appeared in the country's fields. • Social effervescence soon involved writers and poets, specialists and scientists. In 1946, Romanian scientists decided to take an active part in the work for rehabilitating the country. Among those who set up a coordinating committee on 1 July were mathematician Dumitru Pompei, chairman of the National Council for Scientific Research, and several professors-Traian Savulescu, C. Ionescu-Mihae~ti, Horia Hulubei, Constantin Nenitescu, and Simion Oeriu. Dr. Bagdasar became minister of health, and several academicians were sent abroad as ambassadors: Grigore Constantin Moisil to Ankara, Tudor Ionescu to Paris, Mihai Ralea to Washington, Simion Stoilov to the Hague, and so on. To put it in a nutshell, Romanian society seemed inspired by a great force of change for the better, while its people were seized with an elan vital typical of the industrialization drive. The tempo attracted the young and all those eager to build a Romania in which they could take pride. A society with a purpose-that was what impressed the idealists in the West more than the material achievements, which in any case were fairly modest by Western standards. An American visitor told me: "We have grown rich and fat, fully satisfied and happy with what we have. You are poor, but you know where you are going, building a future for yourselves.''

Political Segregation During all those years I was always struck by the contrast between political activism along with collectivism promoted in factories and in

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the fields on the one hand, and the segregated social life of the nomenklatura, the communist leaders, on the other. Typical in this respect was the tendency of all big shots to insulate themselves completely by the tall-fenced villas into which they moved. Even on Cioplea hill at Predeal, their villas were surrounded by horrible wooden fences painted green, which spoiled the wonderful panorama of the peaks and valleys that make the splendor of this mountain resort. In Bucharest, most members of the Central Committee moved into the Primaverii district, which had in fact been blueprinted and built by architect Octav Doicescu as a district of inexpensive semid~tached houses. Yet on Primaverii Boulevard, the few manorlike houses, with vast gardens behind them, were occupied by the members of the Politburo. All were surrounded by high walls or fences through which people could neither see nor pass, as they were guarded by militia. In the street where I lived, all standard houses built by Doicescu had only low wire fences through which could be seen lawns and flowerbeds in front of the dwellings, lending them an intimate and lively aspect. The only house spoiling this natural decor, a structure guarded by a tall iron fence painted gray, was once occupied by the sinister, muchfeared minister of the interior, Tudor Postelnicu. For more than a decade my wife and I were neighbors on the same street with the Ceau~escus and with Leontin Salajan, Emil Bodnara~, Iosif Chi~inevschi, and other communist leaders. We passed the time of day, exchanged a few words, but never visited with each other. Social life unfolded in keeping with party hierarchy. My wife and I belonged to the second echelon, while they were always in the first, and ordinary people carried their portraits at demonstrations. They were entitled to fence off their houses; we were not. In the 1960s they started having palaces built for them that had scores of rooms, vast parks, and even swimming pools. Alexandro Draghici had a luxurious villa built on the bank of Herastrau Lake; later it was converted into Primaverii Palace, where heads of state were put up. The marble and technical installations for the palace were imported from Italy, but Draghici fell into disgrace and never managed to move into it. Appetite grows by eating. Ceau~escu no longer contented himself with a single palace. He occupied a whole block of streets, with an immense walled-up park, after engulfing in it about a dozen villas, one of which he used for his security guards and another as servants quarters. He lived in ... communism. Each member of the party leadership had a villa in the mountains and another one at the seaside for vacation-which remained vacant for the rest of the year. After Ceau~escu had a palace built at Snagov

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(forty kilometers from Bucharest) as a refuge, the other leaders also had their villas built there. While the typical workers' families with two children were entitled by law to barely 40 square meters of dwelling space, the leaders had more than 500 square meters at their disposal. Communist equality! I remember a novel by Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine, in which he described the structure of society in southern Italy: first were the noble landowners, then nothing, then nothing, and after that the cafoni (churls). That was approximately the impression Romanian society of those years conveyed. The social discrepancy was crying to heaven, and that was precisely why the big shots walled themselves up to avoid being seen by the common people. They lived in luxury and gorged themselves, but in fact they did not know how to enjoy life. Projected overnight from sordid housing conditions into palaces, they hardly knew what to do with those. Social life in the new environment required culture, tradition, and habits, which they lacked. I once accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej to OHlne~ti, where the doctors had sent him for taking the waters. I was working with Gaston Marin on the report regarding the country's electrification. One Sunday, Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Chi~inevschi drove over from Bucharest on a social call. They talked politics for a while but afterwards did not know what to do with their time. They simply sat down around the table and started the simplest card game-tabinet, practiced by old women and pensioners. It was a sorry sight: the big leaders of a country playing tabinet. Later they became more sophisticated-they played poker. On its appearance, Milovan Djilas's book The New Class triggered a lively discussion: whether the communist nomenklatura was or was not a class. The well-known Yugoslav dissident maintained that the new class was made up of those who enjoyed special privileges and economic advantages thanks to the administrative monopoly they held-and this seemed to me a correct thesis. A little more controversial was the following sentence: "The new class, or its executive body, the party oligarchy, acts as the owner-and is, actually, the owner." The basic fault with this definition offered by Djilas is the lack of economic determinants of a class that Marx and even non-Marxist sociologists considered essential. Indeed, there was ample evidence that in Soviet society artists, musicians, and moviemakers made much more money than the highest officeholders in the party or government. Moreover, the bureaucrats had no economic basis of their own, one founded on private property, and no way of passing to their descendants their incomes, privileges, or economic status. Last but not least,

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the bureaucrats in the party or state leadership could be dismissed, demoted, or removed from office; these features existed in Romania too. Nevertheless, all those who held commanding positions within the socialist state system (government, administration, army, militia, security) were, as a rule, recruited from the party apparatus. This apparatus formed an observable and identifiable social group, one thereby distinct from the rest of society. Its members regularly attended party meetings and courses for ideological indoctrination and in this way were molded and shaped in a certain spirit and acquired a certain behavior in society. The cohesion of this social group sprang from the status of its members and the special relations among them, from their position in the structure of power, from their high salaries, and particularly from their access to a wide range of restricted benefits and privileges. All of these characteristics combined to set this social elite in a superior category standing above society.

The Style of Party Activists One of Ceau~escu's worshipers mocked Gheorghiu-Dej's style and the climate he generated, characterizing it as a sort of "Olympian calm" accompanied by slow actions, procrastination, putting off decisions. A sort of magic formula was current at various levels, with winsome good humor moderating too radical initiatives, impatience, stormy decisions, the frenzy of action: "Let's think it over." The permanent warnings against rashness, the traditional old peasant's call to deep reflection, to turning over each idea or initiative on every side, evoking sayings like "Tomorrow is another day" and "You must measure a hundred times before you cut once"-X saw that all this had become a dominant style, concealing lack of courage and responsibility, in the last analysis conservatism.

On the other hand, the writer praised the style of scribing him as

Ceau~escu,

de-

the man who took the lead of the field, set the pace, ran most recklessly, proved the boldest stuntman, the man of the greatest passion. He paralyzed as well as inspired people, he intimidated and enthused people at the same time. [ ... ] And at the basis of it all there lay his relentlessness, obstinacy, and patience, his bitter, cutting, ruthless words, lashing like a whip, hitting like a club, exploding like a grenade, his hoarse shout causing windowpanes to chatter, frightening the mean and puny souls, the obtuse minds .... He came close to supernatural characters, as they are imagined in fairy tales, with full rights and powers over the mortals. His

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swollen chest, his tense arms, his tough flesh seemed unbreakable. He felt invincible.

And the conception of the superman viewed as the leader of the herd who were supposed to follow him without a murmur was formulated like this: They had to save the situation at all costs, at the price of privations, of hard work in the open, in the rain, snatching an hour or two of sleep in the cold, doing without the most elementary hygienic conditions, eating God knows what, without any supplementary earnings or with barely symbolic ones.

But the sycophant writer also asked himself questions: The mechanical, mute approval, with lusterless eyes, with sleepy nods, the total approval of his opinions, great or small, understood or not, harmonizing or contrasting with what they knew, with their experience, with their common sense. What was that? The fear of gainsaying, respect pushed to the extreme, lack of honesty, petty bureaucratic toad-eating paralleled by lack of concern? Or was it scorn for too self-assured a voice, allowed to sound in the desert? 1

As a matter of fact, Ceau~escu never allowed things to go at random. Each meeting with the workers was well prepared and minutely staged. Whoever was in the chair perfectly knew who would take the floor and what each of the speakers would say, having been carefully instructed about it. It was like a perfect system in which the feedback is regulated in advance. I remember that at party congresses there was a so-called press service whose task was to draw up the speeches of all those on the list. Without a text approved beforehand, no one would ever reach the rostrum, while deviations from the text were verboten. A "well organized" party meeting was one in which speakers had been carefully selected beforehand and trained to say exactly what was required of them. A reporter once told me about a party meeting somewhere in the provinces that had on the agenda a plan for building a huge complex factory. Despite the technical difficulties pointed out by the experts and the serious shortage of technicians as well as of skilled labor, one of the party members, well programmed by the party secretary, stood up and proposed that the project be implemented ahead of schedule. The proposal was formulated in such terms of revolutionary enthusiasm that nobody dared object, and the proposal was carried. The play and the film Power and Truth by Titus Popovici centers around a similar scene: The specialized engineer, relying on solid documenta-

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tion, argues the impossibility, nay, the danger of building a hydropower station initiated by the Communist Party, but he is branded a traitor and jailed. It is only after the occurrence of the accident foreseen by the engineer that the party secretary visits him in prison and tells him that he had been right.

The Other Face In accordance with a well-known phenomenon of social psychology, we used to believe (or liked to think) that everybody shared the same image of Romanian society: a fully ascendant one, where people built up-to-date industries and a modern culture, an egalitarian society in which the bulk of the population felt that their living standards were rising from one year to another. All of the press of the time-poetry and fiction, films and television-concurred in shaping that image. This is why in the late 1960s, when Romania too passed through a stage of Khrushchev-style thaw, we were shocked to see quite a few novels and neorealistic films that pointed to the existence in Romanian society of a world in which people were leading a life different from ours, sharing different ideas and preoccupations, and hoping for a future not only unlike the one we believed in but its very opposite. In much the same way, I experienced a mental shock when I read a collection of seven philosophical works by Soviet authors, published first in Samizdat and then translated into English; after four decades of Marxist-Leninist indoctrination, they upheld (with solid philosophical training and great force of persuasion) either Nikolay Berdyayev's religious theses or those of modern existentialism. How had those people managed to preserve their intellectual vigor and even to obtain so many works taboo in the hermetic Stalinist society? The abrupt shift from the idyllic literature (about Stakhanovite workers, mindful only of how to top the norms, and about young women who fell in love with tractor drivers or with front-rankers in the socialist emulation drive) to realistic novels (about true-to-life people, with their doubts and sins, and even about party secretaries who reported faked figures in order to show they had fulfilled the plan, or who slept with the factory manager's wife) was a jolt. All of these trends shook the serene view of a society "without conflicts" and of "the new man" brought up in socialism. Here is how a character in such a novel described the future the proletarian revolution had in store for intellectuals: We shall be forced to stand in a line, thinkers will have no access to power, and on the whole they will be denied any attempt to think any-

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thing else than what Marx thought. ... Special institutes for philosophical and sociological research will be set up, and they will all be imprisoned there to cure their appetite of sharing political life. They will only be allowed the freedom of fighting and tearing at each other there in those institutes .... Those indeed worried about tl;le fate of culture, preoccupied with absolute values, will be isolated or jailed, put in the stonejug. Nobody will commit suicide, nobody will be killed either, but they shall all pass through the inferno of adaptation. . .. Generally speaking, they shall all be digested by the tough stomach of the communist party, as Lenin said.

The Romanian gulag began in 1948, after Stalin's condemnation of Tito's nationalist regime. Whole villages populated by Serbs on the Romanian-Yugoslav border were forcibly moved and isolated in the midst of the Baragan plain. Nothing was known and nobody breathed a word about the entire operation and its incredible cruelty until two Serbs managed to escape abroad and describe their odyssey. There followed the organization of an immense forced-labor camp at the Danube-Black Sea canal. In the Romanian universe of concentration camps, this gulag held horror on an epic scale. Thousands of people were forced to work and were beaten and tortured; many of .them lost their lives. Staged there, after the model of the Stalinist show trials, was the "Trial at the Canal" in which "a group of elements alien to the working class" were charged with having organized sabotage and diversions in order to delay construction of the canal. The case was tried by a court-martial on the spot (at Poarta Alba in 1952) and ended in five death sentences, three of which were carried out immediately, while after an appeal two were commuted to hard labor for life. As regards the methods used by the investigators, under the leadership of the notorious torturer, General Nicholschi, there is condemning evidence from a young woman, Adriana Georgescu. At age twentyfour, after graduating from the faculty of law, she became a subeditor of the liberal newspaper Viitorul (The Future) and the secretary to General Radescu (prime minister in 1945). After prolonged inquests, beating, torture at vacare~ti prison, and a frame-up trial, she nevertheless managed to flee abroad, where she wrote down her traumatic experience: At the court-martial I was taken to the office of the prison commander. Next to him, sitting at his desk, the rat. The commander stood up and went out with the words "See you later, General Nicholschi." The latter rose, threw away his cigarette, and approached me. I did not shrink. "Listen, I want to be nice to you and offer you a piece of advice. If you don't take it, you will regret it very much. You do get me, don't you? First of all,

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you must not be as cheeky at the trial as you proved during the inquest." I smiled, calmed and relaxed. I knew his name-I was happy to know his name! "And then, don't tell anything about the inquest at the trial. Just one word too much at the trial, and you sign your own death sentence. We will kill you."

I recently saw on television the ninety-year-old thinker Petre Tutea, shortly before his death. Each word that came out of his mouth simply sparkled with intelligence. How could they possibly imprison for so many years a man of such impressive value? The 1992 television serial that tried to reconstruct the "Reformation Institution" in the Pite~ti prison and the sinister jails of Aiud, Gherla, and elsewhere has virtually shaken up the conscience of the entire Romanian society. The horror of the millions of viewers who watched this nightmarish program has been as great as their surprise. Few knew that such things had taken place in Romania-that was supplementary evidence of the extraordinary performance of the former regime in managing to conceal the other face of communist society. Somebody remarked that out of 23 million Romanians, 20 million had failed to see this face.

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Red Diplomat in Washington

I was appointed to Washington as Romania's envoy by an American farmer. That incredible story started with President Dwight Eisenhower's call in Geneva for East-West trade and exchange programs, which analysts since have attributed to the growing American agricultural surplus. A famous Iowa farmer played a major role in that presidential opening. Roswell Garst from Coon Rapids, Iowa, a pioneer in the development of hybrid seed corn, took his case to Washington, warning the government that while the American population was growing at the rate of 1.7 percent a year, agricultural production was growing at least twice that rapidly. Therefore it was essential to increase farm exports. Farmers, of course, were the most sensitive social group to Eisenhower's call, and Roswell Garst was leading the way. In the early fifties he had started a campaign in favor of using America's agricultural surpluses as a weapon for peace, in particular by selling grains and meat to the communist bloc. His theory was that if the Soviets ate a higher protein diet, they would be less aggressive and expansionist. So in 1955, Garst embarked on a long trip to the Soviet Union and some of its East European satellites. He was accompanied by his long-time friend Geza Schutz, an economist who spoke several languages and was an accomplished musician. As Garst summed up the success of their Eastern trip: "He furnished the culture and I furnished the agriculture."

Appointed by an American Farmer Bob Garst, as friends called him, was exuberant and enthusiastic, gregarious and outgoing. Nobody could resist the spell of his passion for better corn and, through it, for better nutrition and living. He was a big man, with a stomach that made him look as if he had just swallowed a watermelon. Small wonder that he got along very well with Khrushchev. They were alike-both were ebullient and corpulent, talked 89

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bluntly, and enjoyed being showmen and sometimes behaving outrageously. In one famous episode during Khrushchev's visit to Coon Rapids, Bob, increasingly annoyed at reporters and photographers for obstructing views of the livestock and installation, shouted at them and started throwing silage at them. Didn't Khrushchev bang his shoe on the bench at the United Nations? For Garst's visit to Romania, the government chose three individuals to be hosts: Virgil Gligor, deputy minister of agriculture; Grigore Obrejeanu, a leading geneticist and soil specialist; and me, as one who spoke English. We met Bob and Geza at the station and took them to a government guest house; they were shown there an itinerary of twelve days, which Bob managed to reduce to eight so that he could also visit Hungary and be home in time to receive the Soviet delegation. After a day spent sightseeing in Bucharest, the guests were driven to a special railway station that had been built for King Michael's personal use, walked across a 150-foot red carpet, and boarded an elegant sleeping car that provided their accommodation and transportation for most of their visit. They spent several days touring cornfields, experiment stations, collective farms, and state farms. At one huge experiment station, Garst was told that about 1,600 peasants were working 5,000 hectares. Bob remarked sarcastically: "My farm is also 5,000 hectares, but I use only ten workers and six are part-time. They go fishing." For two days Bob and Geza journeyed down the Danube delta, where they went duckhunting on a ship. The best hunter in Romania accompanied them and took care that Garst never missed the target; he shot three ducks, a performance he boasted about back home. All in all, Bob Garst felt more at ease in Romania than in the Soviet Union. 1 His biographer wrote: At the conclusion of their stay, Roswell and Geza (with Brucan along) were received by the prime minister Gheorghi Gheorghiu-Dej. Roswell saw an opportunity to further advance the ice-breaking process. The prime minister made a brief speech, remarking that Romania wanted to improve its relations with the United States. Roswell listened, then, in his blunt way ... replied to Gheorghiu-Dej: "If you really want better relations, why do you have an ambassador in the United States who can't speak English, and an interpreter who can't do much better? Why don't you send Brucan as ambassador?" 2

Second Discovery of America Bob Garst, after inviting a Soviet delegation to visit America, did the same thing with the Romanian delegation. He was very excited about

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such people-to-people exchanges and later wrote: "We thought of ourselves as Marco Polos when we were in Russia and Romania ... and they think of themselves as descendants of Columbus-discovering the United States for the second time." 3 However, for the descendants of Columbus coming from Romania it was not very easy to get American visas, and Garst had to put up quite a fight with the State Department about it: His most dramatic confrontation came over the invitation extended to Silviu Brucan. The State Department objected to Brucan because he was not an agriculturalist but rather an influential newspaperman and leading spokesman for a government that was still considered outspokenly anti-American. In short, the State Department objected to Brucan for some of the reasons Roswell had put forward for inviting him .... Roswell was furious: "You are going to let him come." "No. We are not," countered the S.D. spokesman. "Yes, you are"-insisted Roswell. He would write an article, "Whose Iron Curtain?" if they refused. "You doh't dare let me write that kind of an article!" 4

Eventually I made it. Gligor, Obrejeanu, and I arrived in New York in late November 1955 on a very cold day. The New York Times noted: "The first delegation to come here from Romania arrived yesterday." We were rushed to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a brief press conference, went upstairs to the roof of the hotel for a picture with the Empire State Building in the background, and then were whisked by train to Des Moines, Iowa. We started with a sightseeing tour of the city, and I remember noting a group of brand-new, modern apartment buildings. The guide immediately said: "They belong to Mr. Garst." It was snowing in Des Moines, so we asked the driver to stop at a shoe store to buy a pair of galoshes. When I wanted to pay, the salesman said: "No sir, you are Mr. Garst's guests and this store is his. They are all yours with the compliments of the house." For a while I thought of making another stop at a Cadillac dealer, but then I rejected the idea. In Coon Rapids we were received with typical midwestern hospitality, which began with a lavish dinner dominated by a jumbo turkey sliced personally by the head of the table, Roswell Garst, with two un, usually long knives. And the three of us, Romanians, were very impressed with Elizabeth Garst's cooking and thoughtful hospitality. She was of Bohemian stock, born and raised in the Czech colony of Oxford Junction, Iowa. What impressed us first was that everybody in the family worked and worked hard: Garst's two sons on the farms, and the two daughters, one teaching and the other typing. It was a far cry from the image

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Visiting the Roswe ll Garst farm in Coon Rapids, Iowa, in 1955. From left: Virgil Gligor, Garst, Brucan, and Grigore Obrejeanu.

of the absentee landlord living in luxury in Florida or Las Vegas on the proceeds of his wage slaves. We traveled with Roswell to Chicago and Minneapolis, visited the John Deere and International Harvester plants, and ordered farm equipment. Finally Geza Schutz escorted us to California, where Bob's older brother Jonathan showed us his irrigated cornfields, boasting that he was getting a yield per acre twice as high as his brother in Iowa. Gligor, Obrejeanu (Americans called him O'Brian), and I were simply struck with wonder after seeing the tremendous progress of American farming. When we went back home, we were asked to present a report to the Politburo-an intimidating prospect. My partners on the trip declared flatly they were not going to relate what they had seen, arguing that I was the only one who had spoken with American farmers and, therefore, the only one to go to the Politburo. Of course, they would help me with data and technicalities, but no, they were not goirig to be there. They had jobs they didn't want to lose, they had families they didn't want to hurt and ruin. Gligor claimed an epizootic disease had struck animals in the north of the country and took the next train, while Obrejeanu felt sick and went to bed.

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So there I was alone, facing the Politburo. In a defiant mood, I decided to play it tough. From the very beginning I stated: "Comrades, in the postwar period a real revolution, a technological revolution to be sure, has occurred in American agriculture, raising the yield per acre of grains three or four times and changing the whole productive process, from mechanization, chemistry, and hybridization of seeds to transportation and storage-not to mention the good country roads." The shock around the table was apparent, and I enjoyed the occasion. So I continued describing in detail each of those changes, presenting data and tables, as if I were speaking to a class of students. Ceau~escu was the first to interrupt me with a ticklish question: "But did they show you also the farms going bankrupt and the misery of migrant workers?" The suggestion, of course, was that our host had deceived us, taken us in, showing us only the bright side of the picture, the famous "Potemkin villages." I perceived the insinuation and answered: "I have personally written about bankrupt farmers and migratory workers. They do exist. But I submit that at least the leadership of the party should know the truth about American agriculture and get an explanation of why the United States is flooding world markets with its immense agricultural surplus." And I couldn't help adding a gibe: "I don't think communists should proceed like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand." Gheorghiu-Dej, who was chairing the meeting, said in a reasoning tone: "Don't get excited, Comrade Brucan. As you know, some people understand new things quicker, others slower. Just go ahead." From then on, no one interrupted. I can now understand why Ceau~escu was beginning to hate the old man-and me too as an "accessory." Three months later, in early 1956, Gheorghiu-Dej advised me that he was appointing me ambassador to Washington. The mission was to establish economical and cultural exchanges with America and in particular to procure the most modern technology for our industry and agriculture. In the process, I visited the Midwest often to learn more about farming methods and machinery. The first priority was agriculture, and Coon Rapids, Iowa, became my wife's and my favorite sojourn in America. We stayed in Garst's beautiful mansion enjoying the warm hospitality of Mrs. Garst, who immediately befriended my wife, Alexandra. I rose early in the morning, at 5:00, and accompanied Bob to the South Side Cafe for breakfast. He used to gulp a six-egg omelette with lots of ham while talking to neighbor farmers about urea and cellulose, farm prices and machinery. I listened to them and enjoyed the experience tremendously, realizing that here was the typical marketplace of the American corn belt. Later

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in the day, Bob drove us through the fields and pastures, using his car the way he would use a horse. What intrigued my wife and me was the total absence of workers at the feedlots, and we returned several times in freezing weather to watch the automatic watering tank. Another time, in early September, we watched in admiration as the cornpickers harvested his huge field, two miles long, and came back with mathematical regularity every twenty minutes to unload the harvest in trucks waiting for them. My wife noticed it was like an industrial process, and she asked Bob how they managed to make it in exactly 20 minutes. Bob smiled sarcastically: "If they don't, I fire them. Just like that!" On Garst's advice, Romania bought ten sets of farm equipmentfrom tractors and cornpickers to special trucks to load and unload the harvest and deposit it in warehouses. Garst promised to send his best mechanic to service the machines and teach the Romanians how to maintain them. Indeed, the next year he sent Harold Smouse, who did such a fine job and was so pampered by his Romanian hosts that he stayed an additional six months and Garst had a hard time persuading him to return home. We also bought hybrid seed corn from Garst's Pioneer Company and arranged for his two sons, David and Steve, and their wives to spend six months in Romania to teach and train our agronomists in modern farming. In exchange, quite a few Romanian specialists went to Iowa and Nebraska to learn about American agriculture. This is how the Fundulea experiment station was set up. Unfortunately, the exchange program was canceled later when Ceau~escu came to power. I have serious doubts that such an activity finds its place in the history of diplomacy. I would rather mention it as an episode in the story of Romanian agriculture.

My Brief Encounter with Senator McCarthy Times were hard in Washington in the mid-1950s for a diplomat coming from behind the iron curtain. Truly, times were equally hard for American diplomats in Bucharest. It was a perfect reciprocity. How to break the ice?-that was the question. Just before embarking on the translantic cruise aboard the Queen Elizabeth, I paid a courtesy visit to the U.S. envoy in Bucharest, His Excellency Robert Thayer, and invited him on a short excursion by car to a Moldavian monastery. There the nuns prepared such a lavish and fantastic dinner, with all Romanian specialties, that Thayer was simply mesmerized and later described this sojourn as "the highlight of my stay in Romania." Indeed, for an American to enjoy such a feast in a

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The author and wife Alexandra ride in a 1958 parade celebrating the centennial of Minnesota's statehood.

monastery and to have a nun pouring wine into his glass was an unusual entertainment. However, in Washington, D.C., breaking the ice was a hard job. There were quite a few Romanian refugees in town, and they did not seem to welcome my arrival. Every day I received letters of threat with skulls and crossbones; late in the night I got phone calls from people hurling all kinds of insults and threats at me. They all spoke Romanian. So I assembled a dossier of the letters and made an appointment at the protocol division of the State Department. John Simmons, the protocol director, was a distinguished career diplomat, British-educated and a real gentleman. I told him about the letters and phone calls, asking him what he thought of such hospitality being shown to a newcomer to Washington and emphasizing that I was worried about my children's safety. Simmons was visibly embarrassed and assured me that he condemned such actions and had nothing to do with them. I said: "I trust you, but perhaps the officers at the Romanian desk may have some idea about the authors of these letters. Just show them." And J left the dossier on his desk. Two days later, both the letters and the phone calls stopped. So I visited Simmons again to thank him-and of course to make the point that the State Department was in a position to control the Romanian refugees. The secretary of state was John Foster Dulles. Simmons told me on the telephone that the secretary was extremely busy, and he suggested I present my credentials to an undersecretary. I replied: "I am not in a hurry. I can wait one month, two months, even three months if necessary." That Chinese method did it. Next week I received word that the

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secretary of state would accept my credentials Monday morning at 10 a.m. The meeting with Dulles was quite an experience. His emaciated and cadaverous look made me nervous. As I started telling him that Romania wanted to improve relations with the United States, to start trade and cultural exchanges, and to consider the claims of American citizens to former properties in Romania that had been nationalized, Dulles made a shriveled figlike face and said: "Mr. Ambassador, I must tell you, I am not prepared for a substantive political discussion with you." I felt snubbed and, too aggressively, replied: "Mr. Secretary, probably you are not for the first time in such a posture." He looked at me rather puzzled and said: "You know, you are the first foreign envoy who ever dared to make such a brazen remark." But then, to my great surprise, after a pause he continued: "All right, we shall consider your opening." My surprise, however, turned to real amazement when he stood up, extended his hand, and said: "Mr. Ambassador, whenever you have a serious problem here, don't hesitate to call me." I did call him when the word came from Bucharest that an American delegation was invited to Romania to discuss the issue of compensation to American citizens for their properties there and other outstanding issues, economic and financial. Very soon, the State Department announced that it was willing to open talks with the Romanian government. The appointment at the White House with President Eisenhower went smoothly. The protocol director advised me not to raise serious problems. So, knowing that Eisenhower was curious about languages, I told him a series of Romanian words that sounded like English ones (comandant, ordin, a executa, batalie, disciplintl), which amazed the president. Social life in Washington with almost one hundred embassies was hectic. One evening I attended a reception at the Brazilian embassy on Brazil's national holiday. While I was chatting with two other diplomats, Senator Joseph McCarthy came into the living room and joined our group. He was known as a heavy drinker and at that later hour had already imbibed a good deal. The senator from Wisconsin was a dreaded political figure in Washington, and his campaign against communists subverting America everywhere-from the State Department to Hollywood-was still going on. It so happened that the two diplomats left our group, and there I was alone with Senator McCarthy. As a young and aggressive newcomer to Washington high society, I very much enjoyed the occasion, and because I had just returned from Iowa, I started talking about farming with a heavy midwestern accent. The waiter filled our glasses and

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the two of us engaged in a lively discussion while gradually the crowd closed in around us, anxious to know what the Romanian ambassador was talking about with the Reds-hunter senator. The Soviet ambassador almost knocked me down. I felt the moment had arrived for a showdown. So I said to him: "Senator, do you know with whom you are talking?" He replied something like "Don't know and don't care," to which I said "You will certainly care when you find out" and shouted: "I am the ambassador of Romania, a Red diplomat, sir!" "No!" he replied. "That is impossible. You are joking!" Triumphantly, I applied the finishing stroke: "Would you trust the signature of Secretary Dulles? Here is my identity card." He didn't even look at it and rushed out of the embassy, while I was almost crushed by the crowd wanting to know what we had been talking about for fifteen minutes. "We talked about corn, 11 I said, and nobody believed me. Why? Bob Garst could talk for hours about corn, and everybody listened to him avidly.

Smuggling the Platinum Catalyst Through Diplomatic Pouch My wife is of English extraction (her mother came from Devonshire), so her English was our big asset in Washington's high society. Professionally she is an oil engineer, and by carefully studying the American publications in the field (to which we subscribed), Alexandra very soon became a familiar with the new technologies. When a delegation from Dresser Industries (a Texas company) visited with us, she engaged them in a discussion so substantive that the president told me: "Whenever your government fires you, don't forget, your wife has a safe executive position open to her in our company." Our man was Percival Keith, the executive vice-president of Hydrocarbon Research Corporation and a specialist in petrochemical engineering. He once worked for a while in Constanta, where my wife was born, and he got to know her parents and had nice recollections about his Romanian experience. We visited with him in New York and established friendly relations. His wife was running a farm in Pennsylvania, and he used to joke that what he was earning in industry, his wife was losing in agriculture. So he invited us to his farm to see how she was doing. At that time, I was supposed to give the State Department twentyfour hours' written notice of every journey I planned outside Washington. As a rule, an FBI car would follow my Cadillac at a certain distance, unlike in the city, where they followed bumper to bumper.

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On our way to the Keith's Pennsylvania farm, my driver missed the right exit-a terrible thing to happen in America, where a U-turn is a major traffic violation. I told the driver to stop and went right to the FBI car, which also had stopped. There were two agents in the car and I said to them: "Gentlemen, you knew perfectly well where we were going. Why didn't you signal to us that we were on the wrong track? Now, we don't know the route here, and you have to help us. You take the lead, and we will follow you." They looked at each other bemusedly and did exactly what I had suggested. Of course, they didn't know that in the trunk of my car was a lavish dinner with all kinds of Romanian dishes specially prepared by Mititelu-a fantastic cook disguised as my driver. As soon as we arrived at the Keith's farm, Mititelu took over the kitchen and served Romanian dishes and wines, to the delight of our hosts and some neighbors invited for the occasion. The reason for the whole exercise was Rex-forming, a revolutionary new technology in petrochemistry; the know-how for it at that time was exclusively possessed by American and British companies. We did break their monopoly at Brazi, where we built an up-to-date refinery designed by Percival Keith in the former palace of Princess Elisabeth, where he stayed for three months. In the late 1950s, such a deal had to be approved by the "holy trinity"-the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Commerce Department. I knew that such an approval was inconceivable. Therefore, the $20 million contract was signed at the Romanian embassy in Paris, the equipment was delivered by subsidiaries of Hydrocarbon Research from Italy and West Germany, and the key piece-a platinum catalyst-was taken to Bucharest in the diplomatic pouch by two couriers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I am perfectly aware that this statement "might incriminate me" but after so many years the crime has certainly gone stale. I gave the Politburo a detailed report on the whole affair. As soon as I had finished, Alexandru Draghici, minister of interior, said: "But Comrade Brucan did not tell us about his intimate relations with American businessmen, the merry parties he has been organizing for them, with Romanian caviar and champagne, lots of sarmale [cabbage leaves filled with minced meat, which Americans call "pig-in-a-blanket"] and other Romanian expensive dishes." And he addressed me: "Why are you keeping secret your friendly relations with the capitalists?" Gheorghiu-Dej, who was chairing the meeting, said to him: "Sandule, where do you expect Brucan to get modern technologyfrom American proletarians? Is that what you think?" And after a while he told Draghici in a strong voice: "Instruct your agents at the

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embassy to leave him alone and immediately to cease following his activities and relations. I want to see the cable you send them. It is an order!" Nevertheless, the surveillance continued, as I recently discovered when I finally was allowed to see my secret files at the Securitate. I found many reports from Draghici's agents describing my lunches at the embassy with James Reston from the New York Times, my regular dinners with Walter Lippmann and his wife, and of course my friendly relations and visits with Drew Pearson. The latter, always fishing for sensational items and gossip, was a real danger for a diplomat. Once we accompanied the Soviet ambassador, Mihail Menshikov ("smiling Mike," they called him in Washington) to a derby in Maryland where Russian horses participated for the first time in a U.S. race. Pearson's famous column "Washington Merry Go-Round" contained this item: "'Where is Ambassador Menshikov," Brucan was asked. 'He went down indoctrinating the horses,' replied the jovial Romanian." Fortunately, Menshikov had a keen sense of humor and did not get angry about this. My wife used to remark that with such a "big mouth" and such table manners, I could only be an ambassador in Washington, D.C.

With all the unpleasant and sometimes hard times of those Cold War years, I enjoyed my stay in the United States. When my wife and I returned home, we wrote a book about our American journey and experience that rapidly became a best-seller. In fact, A Close-Up at America was considered the first book in the communist era of Romania in which two prominent citizens spoke with human understanding and warmth about people they had met and places they had seen. Of course, many officials did not like that "deviation," and Nicolae Ceau~escu was one of them.

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The Illiterate Couple

Nicolae Ceau~escu graduated four elementary classes in his native village, Scornice~ti. His wife, Elena, spent more years in the village school of Petre~ti but not many more classes. In other words, for the twenty years or so before the second revolution, Romania was run by two "people with four elementary classes," to use a typical Romanian expression. 1 He could not speak correctly; she could not read correctly. The self-portrait the tyrant painted was that he was born a peasant, became a worker, and eventually turned into an intellectual. In 1951 Iosif Chi~inevschi, the propaganda secretary of the Central Committee, called to tell me that Gheorghiu-Dej wanted me to help the young Ceau~escu write a major article for Sdnteia. So I met Nicolae, talked over the theme of the article, and suggested that he make an outline, a sort of draft in which he should briefly formulate the main points so that his ideas would come out of the article. After a couple of days he came with a draft, a handwritten one. I was shocked when I read it. No grammar, no syntax, no punctuation marks-the author was illiterate. Moreover, his Marxist education was very poor. He had never heard of Marx's Das Kapital or Lenin's major works, just Stalin's. But The Problems of Leninism he knew almost by heart; he could recite whole pages like poetry. Later, Constantin Mitea became his "translator into Romanian," turning his master's clumsy speeches into correct literary language. And yet once Ceau~escu was conducatorul (leader), he considered himself a scholar, a scientist. And so did Elena. I call such people "power scientists," a new socioprofessional category. They become scientists only after getting into power, but once they have lost power, they cease to be scientists.

I Knew Him Well In the late 1940s and the 1950s we were neighbors. They lived across the street, on Zdanov Boulevard, and my children went to school with 101

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their children, Valentin, Zoia, and Nicu; they played soccer together on a nearby playground. We knew very little about Nicolae and Elena's romance. Not even their sycophantish biographers wrote about it, and I was told by one of them that the subject was taboo. The fact is they had lived together briefly before he was imprisoned, and I don't believe the nasty allegation made by Adela, her sister-in-law, after the revolution, that during the war Elena had consorted with German soldiers-she simply wasn't the type for that sort of thing. Moreover, I feel that not even a soldier who was desirous of women could fall for Elena. Her looks made you think of anything but sex. There was nevertheless a consensus among comrades that Elena was far more sexually experienced than Nicolae, for he was like a Swedish match-didn't catch fire except when struck on its box. He never talked about sex or wanted to know about it; he was a puritan. With her I am not so sure but don't want to speculate. Anyway, they were married in 1946, and Valentin was born in 1949, Zoia in 1950, and Nicu in 1951. Each year a baby-a regular performance. Indeed the couple looked happy. In the meantime, Ceau~escu traveled to Moscow for a short course in political and military sciences at the Frunze Academy. When he returned, Gheorghiu-Dej offered him the position of political director of the army, in charge of organizing and supervising the political indoctrination of the soldiers in the new Marxist-Leninist spirit. The job came with instant major-general rank. When I saw him in his new uniform, the man already looked different. He was somebody "important" and waited for my "Good morning" first. By 1948 Ceau~escu was back in civilian clothes, as deputy minister of Agriculture. In 1949, the party launched the drive for collectivization, and I remember he was very tough with the peasants who resisted the move. He used to storm the countryside with a pistol in his hand. That Ceau~escu should attack Ana Pauker in the most vicious way the moment Gheorghiu-Dej turned the tables against the outsider group was something I had expected: She simply represented what he hated most, particularly her Jewishness. On the other hand, she did not hide her contempt for his lack of education and sophistication. And Ceau~escu was a revengeful man: People with him in prison recalled that when he played chess, he never forgave anyone who beat him and sought to avenge the defeat even many years later. His personality was and remains highly controversial; there are various opinions about his motivations and capacities. What made him tick? Let me start by saying that he was very smart, with a peasant's canny intelligence and a prodigious memory. Moreover, his mind worked

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very fast-he had what the French call repartie, prompt intellectual reactions. I once saw a verbatim record of a Brezhnev-Ceau~escu confrontation in which the latter beat the Soviet leader to the punch. This is what impressed most Western leaders who met him. Although he started with a vacuum of knowledge, he learned fast, but did so with all the defects of a self-taught person-in his case, big gaps of knowledge in geography and history and, worse, in economics and technical sciences. However, precisely because he was half-educated and halfknowledgeable, he became the last encyclopedist. At a time when the tremendous diversification, broadening, and deepening of scientific and technical fields had reached the point that no one could any longer embrace all of them, Ceau~escu was the man who knew everything about anything. He formulated his own theories in cybernetics or electronics with equal competence as he gave directives in designing tractors and applying manure in farming. Everybody noticed he was very hot-tempered, quick to get in a rage-the type of person who would "shoot first and then think." As a teenager, he was often involved in street brawls, and in later years dealt very roughly with ministers and even Politburo members, hurling all kinds of insults at them. I think he suffered from a series of complexes originating in both his physical defects (undersized and ugly) and his clumsiness (never mastered a skill). On top of that, he was afflicted with a stammer so risible that people could hardly resist laughing in his face, which drove him mad. But Ceau~escu was endowed with an iron will, and one must admit he got what he wanted. However formidable the challenge, he systematically overcame, one after the other, all obstacles in his way. He eventually overcame even his stammer. In political manipulation, intrigue, and intraparty struggles for power, Ceau~escu was a Machiavellian genius. As I describe later, his accession to power was a masterstroke, as was the scheme whereby he eliminated all potential challengers and dissidents, one at a time. He was particularly adept at the intraparty power game, knowing how to ingratiate himself to the party veterans and jockeying into position as one of the young rising activists supposed to carry on the flag of communism. The organization of a hierarchical political system in which power is concentrated at the top was perhaps the only scientific part of his conception and performance as a leader. His methods served him well: the organization and reorganization of all party and state structures, the systematic purge of challengers and dissidents, the so-called rotation of cadres that prevented any communist official from staying in one job or place too long and thus acquiring a power base of his own, the

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principle that no leader of a judet (region) should be a native of it, for the same reason, and of course the appointment of family members in key positions of power (Figure 8.1). These tactics created an almost perfect model for a one-man dictatorial political system that lasted for a quarter of a century. Ceau§escu was the type of tyrant who wanted to control not only the political and economic activities of the nation but also the personal lives of his subordinates-23 million Romanians. He tried to decide and control what they ate, how they worked, what they did in the evening, how they enjoyed themselves, and even their sexual habits. To teach Romanians what to eat, in 1982 he formulated a "Program of Scientific Nourishment," establishing by decree which segments of the population were overeating for their jobs and mandating the number of calories each group required. Since there was a critical shortage of meat, he tried to turn people into vegetarians and even blamed Romanians for eating "too much" and being "too fat." Ceau§escu's demographic policy forcing women to produce more children (a minimum of three for each family) was severely enforced. Strict controls and stiff penalties accompanied the supervision of pregnant women, abortion was declared illegal, and even schoolgirls fourteen or fifteen years old were encouraged to have babies. The result was Ceau§escu's most horrible legacy that still lingers: thousands of babies thrown away by their mothers filling up the orphanages and the institutions for handicapped children. Nowhere in the communist-block was the running of the economy so rigidly centralized. Ceau§escu was more Stalinist than Stalin in this respect, subjecting even private farmers and individual peasant plots to state directives and discipline. Actually, his famous program for the "systematization of villages" was nothing but a method of destroying the individual household that gave the peasant a certain degree of autonomy-which Ceau§escu hated and wanted to abolish. Compared with Ceau§escu, the Sun King of France, Louis XIV, was a liberal ruler. Under Ceau§escu's reign, Romania was a perfect garrisonstate. To have a complete picture of his personality, one must certainly consult a psychiatrist, for Ceau§escu was not "normal" in his behavior. I remember an American novel in which the captain of a ship behaved normally most of the time, but when a storm threatened to submerge the ship, he lost control of his nerves and went berserk. Something of that sort was probably Ceau§escu's case, coupled also with paranoia. His personal physician, Dr. Marcel Schachter, reached the conclusion that Ceau§escu was mentally ill and discretely reported his diagnosis to the minister of health, Dr. Burghelea. That happened in the late 1960s.

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FIGURE 8.1 The Family Network of Power. Nicolae Ceau~escu had six brothers, but one died at an early age, and three sisters. Elena Ceau~escu had one brother.

After a couple of days, Dr. Schachter, who lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building, was pushed from his balcony and found dead in the street. He was forty-eight years old. I Knew Her Too

Elena Ceau~escu will go down in history as the biggest hoax in scientific performance and work. It is absolutely incredible that a woman who was not only ignorant but equally stupid could deceive Romanian academic and university quarters as well as most prestigious Western scientific institutions. The apex, of course, was the public ceremony at the Royal Institute of Chemistry, during her London visit, where she got an "honorary fellowship" and was praised for "her contribution to macromolecular experimental chemistry." The British fellows never asked themselves why Elena Ceau~escu avoided any scientific discussion when they had tea around the table and instead spoke-through her interpreter-about the weather in London. Only small talk-that was her strategy.

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Elena was born in the village of Petre~ti in a middle-income peasant family. Her father combined small farming with small business, running a store where he sold candles and penknives. This is why friends called her Lenuta Briceag (Lenuta Penknife). She was a very poor pupil; in fact she hated school. A school report kept hidden and discovered only after the revolution showed that fourteen-year-old Elena flunked most of the basic subjects, achieving a passing grade only in singing, gymnastics, and needlework. Actually she was declared repetenta (had to repeat the class). Another performance, equally kept hidden, took place in 1955 while she was attending a chemistry course. At the exam for social sciences (Marxism-Leninism), lecturer Bajenaru, who was supervising the written test, caught her cheating; not being aware of her "status," he expelled her from the exam room. For the rest of his life, Bajenaru lived in fear of being reprimanded, but nothing happened. A mysterious blanket covered all of Elena's university activities-from annual exams to graduation and Ph.D. Romanians used to say that "Elena has had neither colleagues nor teachers." A lonely student-that's what she was, and I remember that the first time a newspaper mentioned she was a chemist, the surprise was equally great for us, the neighbors, as for her children. Elena's greatest talent rested with her ways of concealing near-total ignorance in chemistry. Although she became "a scholar of international reputation," she never shared her knowledge with Romanian chemists, never delivered a lecture on chemical subjects, never participated in scholarly discussions, and never went to international conferences of chemistry to present her research work. She preferred to publish books prepared by the researchers of the Institute of Chemistry (ICECHIM), which she became director of in 1965. Her motto was, You write, I sign. A Romanian joke poked fun at her ignorance. When a Romanian major, Gheorghe Prunaru, flew on a Soviet spaceship, he was congratulated and decorated by Ceau~escu. But the president reproached him: "ldid not like the way you bounced up and down. It is not dignified for a Romanian officer." Major Prunaru tried to explain that the law of gravitation doesn't work in space. Late that night, the leader was still thinking in bed and said to Elena: "Lenuta, when did I give that law of gravitation?" She replied: "Why ask me? I am not a lawyer, I am a scientist!"

Training Their Children with the Securitate Elena Ceau~escu was the only mother who brought up her children with the help of Securitate officers. I remember that one winter in the

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1960s Valentin went with his class to the mountains during the Christmas holidays. When they returned, my daughter told me a security officer had followed them most of the time and Valentin had remarked: "'That must be my mother's idea.'" Valentin later married the beautiful Iordana Borila, a daughter of a Politburo member of Bulgarian origin and of a half-Jewish, half-Hungarian mother-the worst possible combination for the nationalist Ceau~escu. Iordana was never allowed in Ceau~escu's house. Valentin visited his parents quite often, particularly after he had a son, their only grandchild. The young couple and the baby were shadowed by the Securitate most of the time. Eventually, in 1988, Valentin succumbed to his mother's pressure, separated from Iordana, and accepted a position in the Central Committee. When daughter Zoia was twenty-six years old, she ran away with her lover, Mihai Matei, a journalist at Lumea. For four days and nights, the Securitate could not find their hideout-a hotel in Maramure~. Elena ordered him dispatched to Africa in the diplomatic service, and nothing has been heard of him since. With the dauphin, Nicu, things were more complicated because he was the designated heir apparent. But he proved difficult to shadow and hard to keep under control. A joke going around in those days said that Nicu spent weekends perforating plastic condoms with a needle to support his father's demographic policy. A playboy, a drunk, and a womanizer, Nicu was a big problem for Elena. It was not enough for the Securitate to follow him and install microphones in his bedroom, as they did with Valentin and Zoia. He moved quickly from one place to another, and for almost a year he slept with Donca, the daughter of Paul Niculescu-Mizil, living in the latter's house. Donca was his only true love, and whenever he got drunk he would shed tears for her. When Donca got pregnant, Elena sent Nicu on a Latin American tour and ordered the Securitate to take Donca to Elias Hospital, where she was strapped down and subjected to an unwanted abortion. Nicu later was minister of youth, and he spent almost every night until late in the orgies organized in the apartment of Jenica Maurer, son of the former prime minister. Elena stormed the place one night, closed it down, and put a militia officer in front of the house to make sure that the interdiction was enforced. Much has been made of Imelda Marcos's thousand pairs of shoes that were found after her husband was evicted from Manila. So what? The first lady of Romania managed to pile up a wardrobe so extensive-two thousand gowns at last count-that the bulk of it had to be stored in four or five of her palaces. Fur coats were her obsession, and by the time Elena was out of business she owned at least ten of the

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most exclusive ones, first of course a chinchilla. An ambassador in Latin America had been instructed to find the most expensive one. Mission accomplished. The country girl from Petre~ti developed an irresistible urge for luxury items and glamorous living. First and foremost she wanted to look well dressed and elegant. But her hea.vy-bodied silhouette, large hips, and low-slung buttocks were unsuited to the high-fashion clothes she saw in Western magazines. When she tried them on, a Romanian would say, she looked as if someone had saddled a cow. Indeed, it seems that someone coming from below is greedier and more eager for glamor and luxury than a nouveau riche of middle-class origin. Elena made sure that gold in some form or another was everywhere, particularly in the bathrooms. And Nicolae shared her temptation; their greed was insatiable. Whatever the happy couple saw, either in Buckingham Palace or in the shah of Iran's palace, immediately on their return home they asked architects to "make" something similar for them in Romania. In contrast with the austerity program the Ceau~escus advocated for ordinary people, the two ate well indeed. All the edibles came from a special state organic farm near Bucharest, and whenever they traveled they took with them their own food supply. Both suffered from paranoia, fearing poisoning and contamination, so that a dietician and a food-taster were always in attendance. Their dinners for distinguished guests were lavish, and after the revolution, Romanians were simply enraged to find the menu for Elena's last birthday party: three varieties of large-grain caviar, pate de foie gras, and fifteen kinds of meat, fowl, and fish with such delicacies as Cornish game hens, pheasant, lobster, and smoked salmon-items Romanians had not seen in ages. The king and queen had thoroughbred dogs around and soon adopted two Labradors that were treated royally. Special sheets were thrown over a bedroom sofa for them at night, the chef cooked meals for them, and special steps were built in the swimming pool to make it easier for them to climb out. Whenever the presidential motorcade stopped traffic on Bucharest's main boulevards, people could see the two pampered dogs in the rear of the presidential limousine. But the couple's favorite toy became the Civic Center, which Romanians used to call "the monster." It started with Ceau~escu's 1971 visit to Pyongyang, where he was impressed with the monumental buildings and the neat layout of the large boulevards with endlessly similar apartment blocks-all tied up with the deified name of Kim Il Sung. From that time, Ceau~escu dreamed not only of rebuilding Bucharest in his own image (as Baron Haussmann had done with Paris) but also

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of erecting a single monumental edifice that would symbolize his glorious epoch and be his legacy. The project had to include a vast underground shelter with an atomic bunker apartment for the reigning couple and a small underground railway train linking the center with major strategic points in the capital. Every Saturday morning, Ceau~escu visited the construction site, and each visit ended with new "indications" that changed almost everything: The columns were first Doric, then Ionic, then Doric again; the roof was initially supposed to be flat, then he wanted a dome. Even the height of the building was increased from thirty-five to fifty-seven meters when as an afterthought he added two stories for offices. He did not care-and certainly didn't know-that such basic alterations required complete recalculation of the structural resistance of the building. He had no inhibition about designing with his own clumsy hand the huge twisted-metal flagpole atop the roof; it was so ugly it had to be removed altogether after his death. Ceau~escu indeed created a monstrosity: The Civic Center is the largest building in the world, and now we Romanians simply don't know what to do with it. Our only hope is that some crazy American tycoon will buy it and ship it home. Le Coup de Partl

I accompanied Gheorghiu-Dej on his last trip to Warsaw to attend the Warsaw Treaty summit in 1965. Because he did not feel well, he decided to skip the final reception and embark as quickly as possible on our special train back home. There are quite a few versions of his death and how Ceau~escu became his successor. I knew the protagonists of the drama and, perhaps more important, the bodyguards and servants so devoted to Gheorghiu-Dej who watched him day and night and could reconstitute hour by hour the behind-the-scenes maneuvers around his deathbed. I will try to relate the story as best I can. In early March 1965 we had general elections, and Gheorghiu-Dej for the first time was unable to participate in the campaign. He was already weak and rested most of the time in bed. The decision was made to take the television camera to his bedside for him to give a short speech to the electorate right before the vote. As head of the television service, I was in charge of the project. Ion Gheorghe Maurer's story claiming that Gheorghiu-Dej's final wish was "that Comrade Maurer be my successor" is indeed a ridiculous exercise in self-vindication. Maurer was a typical fellow traveler, a

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The author (front left) attending a 1961 function with Ion Gheorghe M au rer, prime mini ster of Romania from 1961 to 1974.

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shrewd lawyer, and an intelligent parliamentary debater in the first National Assembly-by far the best politician for that sort of thing the Communist Party could possibly present at that time. But he was a patrician with a cosmopolitan background totally alien to party life and thus was anything but a potential party leader. Gheorghiu-Dej knew this very well. Actually Gheorghiu-Dej was worried about Nicolae Ceau~escu. Ever since Gheorghiu-Dej had been struck by cancer, Ceau~escu had been maneuvering feverishly to make it to the top, and most of his machinations had been brought to Gheorghiu-Dej's attention. The old man worried that Ceau~escu was too impulsive and revengeful for the top job, and what happened in those days strikingly reminded us of Lenin's testament written on his deathbed warning that "Stalin is too coarse, and his fault, though quite tolerable in relations among us Communists, becomes intolerable in the office of general secretary." But Stalin had successfully isolated Lenin, depriving him of all information about current party business by pretending concern for Lenin's health. In fact, long before Lenin's death, Stain had arranged with Lev Kamenev for the latter to propose him as general secretary at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee. And he made it. Ceau~escu had learned the lesson well. He made a deal with Maurer: Ceau~escu would nominate Maurer as prime minister-he did so 12 March 1965-and in exchange, after Gheorghiu-Dej's death, at the Politburo meeting, Maurer would nominate Ceau~escu as first secretary, with Emil Bodnara~ seconding this proposal. So on 16 March, when Gheorghiu-Dej called Maurer and Bodnara~ to his deathbed, asking them to convene the Politburo and elect Gheorghe Apostol as first secretary, the question of succession had already been settled. Ceau~escu made it. The only parallel I can think of to how communist regimes handle succession is the costa nostra system for choosing a leader-total discretion combined with horse-trading deals. I was so disappointed and saddened by the whole scenario that I decided to resign from my cabinet position with the Committee on Radio and Television and keep only my job at the university, where I have been teaching since 1949. It was an unusual move in the communist system, and Emil Bodnara~, my superior, was completely surprised when I presented my letter of resignation. It was my turn to be surprised at his reaction: "Do you realize what that means? First your salary will be cut to half, you will have no car, no access to our special boutique, to our hospital and accommodations. Think it over!"

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Yes, I thought it over-and concluded that there was something rotten with a system that could make revolutionaries like Bodnara~ behave in terms of a new privileged class-the nomenklatura.

The Four Phases of Ceau~escu I would divide Ceau~escu's reign into four phases of political metamorphosis and behavior: 1965-1971, 1971-1980, 1980-1987, and 19871989. The first phase started with the ninth congress of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965-the congress of promises and openings designed to create the image of a more liberal, democratic, and enlightened leader, as opposed to that of Gheorghiu-Dej, whose popularity and prestige acquired in the early 1960s tormented and irritated Ceau~escu. In that political image-making drive, Ceau~escu was certainly inspired by Khrushchev's political openings and cultural upsurge, in particular by the favorable political effect both inside the country and in the West. At the ninth congress, Ceau~escu strongly criticized Gheorghiu-Dej's violation of the principle of "collective leadership," stipulating that this principle was a basic axiom of the party and, consequently, no person should hold office in both party and state. Administrative methods in arts and literature were equally condemned, and something like "Let a thousand flowers bloom" was suggested in liberalizing the creative potential of artists and writers. Small wonder that the "new party line" attracted the Romanian intelligentsia and raised great hopes in the population at large. The manipulation of national symbols that had started with Gheorghiu-Dej as a timed and relatively restrained policy was now raised to the level of a general party and state strategy. The "reRomanianization" campaign developed not only into the celebration of historical and cultural figures associated with the struggle for independence but also into an ingenious effort to cast the new leader as the virtual reincarnation of all ancestral courageous kings-from the Dacian Buerebista and Decebal to Mircea the Old, Michael the Brave, and Stephen the Great. The best Romanian painters were commissioned to place Ceau~escu into the context of these great founders and makers of Romanian history. The apex of that nationalistic drive and strategy was, of course, the huge rally in the Palace Square on 21 August 1968, when Ceau~escu addressed an emotional, cheering crowd, condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as "a great mistake and a grave danger to peace

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in Europe, to the fate of socialism in the world, and a shameful moment in the history of the revolutionary movement." He made the point that interested him most: "There was no justification whatever for military intervention in the affairs of a fraternal socialist state." He also announced what would later become the Romanian military doctrine of "people's war," namely the formation of "armed patriotic guards" composed of workers, peasants, and intellectuals. That historic statement made Ceau~escu not only a national hero but also an international star, and his popularity increased tremendously. Without any doubt, everybody in Romania applauded himincluding those who had spent long years in jail and concentration camps. By the end of the 1960s, over a quarter of academicians and holders of doctorates, some 46 percent of engineers, and over half of · the teachers had joined the party. The West was impressed, and Western leaders began their journeys to Bucharest. First came British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, then President de Gaulle, and finally President Nixon, who in joining a frenzied hora (Romanian folk dance) around the Arc de Triomphe in Bucharest inaugurated a new era in Romanian-American relations. Here one must recall that Ceau~escu made an intelligent and foresighted "political investment" in Nixon's future, as he invited the American leader at a time (1967) when the latter's political fortunes were in doubt and gave him the kind of red-carpet treatment usually accorded to a head of state. Belonging to that first phase was also the decision of the ninth congress to set up a commission to investigate and clarify the political situation of a number of party activists who had been arrested or sentenced many years before. In that move, Ceau~escu shot two hares with one bullet. On the one hand, there was an implicit promise of the legality Gheorghiu-Dej had failed to observe; on the other hand, by emphasizing the heavy responsibility of the Politburo for having approved Patra~canu's trial without checking the accusations brought against him, Ceau~escu was opening up the series of masterly strokes whereby he would eliminate, one after the other, his potential adversaries, starting with Draghici, head of the repressive apparatus; Alexandro BarUideanu, an opponent of his insane economic decisions; and Prime Minister Maurer, who was trying hard to slow Ceau~escu's forced industrialization drive. By the time the tenth congress was held (August 1969), only three members of the former Gheorghiu-Dej team (Ceau~escu, Maurer, and Bodnara~) were still members of the Standing Presidium that replaced the Politburo.

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The Mini-Cultural Revolution During the first phase, Ceau~escu worked according to a scenario designed to convey to the nation a certain image of his leadership. Thus, he learned the art of hand shaking and baby kissing, he promised everything to everyone, he proclaimed principles in which he did not believe (collective leadership, legality, creative freedom of artists and writers, and the like), and he switched from his morose face to a smiling one and even started making jokes. He proved to be an accomplished actor in that demanding political role. In the second phase, he began to be himself. And it was in China and North Korea in early 1971 that he found at last the model of communism that suited him best and in particular the cultural and political system that fitted him like a glove. First, the Ceau~escus were immensely impressed with the welcome in Beijing and Pyongyang. The thousands of flag-waving uniformed children, the huge crowds cheering and applauding in unison in adulation of their beloved leaders, the factories they visited that buzzed like beehives with disciplined activities, and the many pageants, parades, and rallies-everything seemed to Nicolae and Elena worth copying. If they only could do the same thing in Romania! Indeed, it was a formidable experiment in social engineering directed from a single center. That was the idea, and Nicolae lapped it like milk. In addition to all that, Elena discovered a model for herself in Chiang Ching, Mao's ambitious and ruthless wife. Forgetting about Chiang's start as a promiscuous young starlet who had to sleep with film directors or producers for every contract, Elena admired the way Chiang Ching had seduced Mao by making herself sexually and professionally indispensable to him. It was Chiang Ching who instilled in Elena the ambition and desire to become politically active herself and-why not?--even to dominate her husband. For a long time I have noticed that scholars and university professors keep coming to international conferences merely to confirm their prejudices; they pick up from others' speeches the points that may strengthen their own theories. Ceau~escu followed the same path. He extracted from Marx only the ideas that suited him, and he found in China and North Korea a confirmation of his own prejudices that Marxism-Leninism meshed well with jingoist nationalism and that austerity and strict discipline were absolutely necessary to make a nation ripe for communism. And when he returned home, he steered that course. Actually, his brave stance against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia had not been motivated by the democratic spirit of Alexandru

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Dubcek's reforms. His main concern was independence, which was threatened by Brezhnev's doctrine: The Soviets might do to him what they had done to Dubcek. Actually, in Ceau~escu's mind, independence meant that he should be free to do as he pleased. His July 1971 "theses" inaugurated the cultural revolution in Romania. They provided for more centralized control over cultural and artistic matters, over education and media. He insisted on the necessity for "molding socialist consciousness": Party ideological indoctrination had to be intensified, and the emphasis on nationalist themes had to be strengthened with more folk music and folk dancing, while "decadent" Western music and dancing, in particular rock and roll, were banned or severely curtailed. To ensure the enforcement of the new proletarian spirit, all theaters and publishing houses were ordered to include on their boards "representatives of workers' and peasants' organizations." Everywhere the screws of state control were tightened. In March 1974, Ceau~escu assumed also the office of president of the Republic in addition to his party job-thus violating the principle established at the ninth congress that forbade holding office in both party and state. As for the collective-leadership principle, hailed at the same congress, nobody dared now mention it. Ceau~escu was already an absolute monarch. To present his cumulation of functions as a matter of organizational principle designed to increase efficiency in government, Ceau~escu decreed that a merger of party and state leadership from top to bottom should be institutionalized as never before in communist historythat local party secretaries should accumulate the functions of prefects and mayors, down to the smallest village. The restructuring made a mockery of local elections: With the village party secretary nominated by the party, who would have dared to vote against him in the election for mayor?

Foreign Debt First The third phase (1980-1987) was characterized by austerity programs dictated by Ceau~escu's decision to set as a first priority the payment of foreign debt. This coincided with the elevation of his wife Elena to a high position of power in both the party and the state, which eventually led to a bipolar power structure: Cabinet 1 and Cabinet 2. In this phase, both of them drove the mini-cultural revolution to its logical conclusion: Romania turned its back on the scientific-technological revolution. Already in the late 1970s the negative effects of Ceau~escu's forced industrialization drive had begun to assert themselves rather vigor-

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ously. In particular, the building of a new huge steel plant in Catara~i and the fantastic increase of Romania's oil-refining capacity required imports of iron ore and crude oil that cost around $3 billion annually. Debt service on the $10 billion foreign debt added to this about $1.5 billion annually. But the entire trade surplus Romania managed to achieve in 1981 was a mere $300 million; a special effort made in 1982 raised the surplus to $1.6 billion. Nevertheless, this was peanuts compared with the almost $5 billion required by imports and debt services. An annual deficit of some $3 billion amounted to a sure prescription for bankruptcy. Therefore, Ceau~escu opted for a salvation crash program that included drastic cuts of imports to minimal requirements, equally drastic reductions in national consumption, and export of every possible item, starting with food. To ensure such an inhumane policy, he initiated a series of austerity measures that lowered living standards to levels unmatched since the famine of the postwar years. In 1981, bread rationing was resumed, and harsh measures were taken to limit consumption of basic foodstuffs such as edible oil, sugar, flour, rice, and corn. Of course, the price of such imports as tea and coffee became almost prohibitive for ordinary people. Commuting peasants could no longer buy bread and food in town. The militia became the regulator of the agricultural product trade, and the "open market" fell under state control. In a claim worthy of Stalin, Ceau~escu argued that the peasantry benefited from fixed prices of industrial products and must reciprocate by selling farm products at prices set by the state. To hell with the law of value! In February 1982, prices of 220 food items rose by an average of 35 percent, while prices for gasoline, electricity, natural gas, and heating fuel kept rising all the time. Street lighting was cut off altogether in the countryside, while in the cities only the main streets were poorly lit, to the delight of thieves, burglars, and rapists. And Ceau~escu's rule was called the "years of light." It was time for Elena to prop up her husband in the struggle against the Romanian people. In 1979, she became chairwoman of the National Council for Science and Technology; in 1980, she was made first deputy prime minister-a deputy stronger than the top man in the government-and acquired a far more important job as chair of the Central Committee's commission for state and party cadres, a post that made her boss of the whole nomenklatura. Cabinet 2 began to duplicate Cabinet 1. Every high official who wanted to keep his job or to get approval of a proposal had to report not only to him but also to her. Those were the years when Ceau~escu began to suffer from a couple of diseases: diabetes and prostatitis. As he

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became weaker physically, she became stronger politically. She seemed to have acquired a sort of spell over him. Whenever he spoke to a crowd extemporaneously, he would pause and look at her for approval. And she was always reassuring: Go ahead, Nick! At one point she started controlling even the list of his daily appointments. One day, Radu Beligan, a famous actor and director of the National Theater, persuaded Ceau~escu to cancel the decision to cut subsidies for theaters from 70 to 30 percent, on the ground that it was detrimental to party propaganda and patriotic education. Elena was furious and overruled her husband's decision. From then on, the president's cabinet chief had to send regularly the list of the next day's appointments to Cabinet 2 for her approval. Unlike Nicolae, Elena was stupid. Moreover, because everything about her was a hoax and she knew it (her underground activity, her Ph.D. and scientific works-all were concocted), she was very insecure and consequently more wicked than her husband. When I was arrested in 1989 and investigated for two months, she was the one who ordered my daughter to be fired and her husband, an architect, to be removed to a faraway city; Elena eventually instructed the Securitate to evict the whole family from our house to a rural-type shack that lacked running water and heating gas. She was very adept at this sort of thing. The Ceau~escus, in perfect harmony, were hostile to the scientifictechnological revolution, in particular to computer and information technologies. Like Brezhnev and other communist leaders, they perceived the computer as a threat to communism and the information technology as something that could destroy central planning, control of information, and the whole system. Thus, they abolished the Institute of Mathematics and, later, the Institute of Information. No translation of books on that revolution was permitted. Elena had her own way of dealing with complicated matters: simple but radical and effective. To prevent the computer and information revolution from spreading to Romania, she effectively closed all channels through which such knowledge could be smuggled in: The funding for importing foreign books, magazines, or reviews was slashed; the number of Romanian students attending foreign universities was cut to zero; and participation of scientists and engineers in international conferences was discouraged. When the members of the Academy Presidium argued that Romanian scientists could not do their job without attending international conferences, she replied: "Nonsense, comrades, I have never participated in international congresses, and look where I am!" They fell speechless.

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Elena's "cadre policy" was the talk of the town. In 1985, she purged from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the basis of several criteria (bourgeois "unhealthy" social origin, relatives abroad, and so on), most of the diplomats who spoke foreign languages. She had a theory: Someone who did not speak foreign languages would never defect to the West; he had to come back. Even for Paris she found an ambassador who did not speak French.

"I Decide What Is Scientific!" Nicolae Ceau~escu was convinced he was an economic genius. The craziest.ideas that came to his head were immediately implementedand nobody dared tell the Emperor that he was naked. His dream was to turn Romania into a great machinery-exporting nation. First came industrial investments. The proportion of national income allocated to investments grew to 34.1 percent during the 1971-1975 five-year plan and to 36.3 percent in the period 1976-1980, one of the highest rates in the world-and, of course, "Group ft:' of heavy industry got the lion's share. Although Romania had no iron-ore mines and the Soviets refused to increase their exports from Krivoi Rog, Ceau~escu went as far as Brazil, India, and even Australia for iron ore to build a steel industry that in the early 1980s equaled the West German counterpart in per-capita output. He was not satisfied with one Romanian-built car, the Dacia (based on a Renault model and technology); he arranged with Citroen for a second model, the Oltcit, and even started a third one in Timi~oara. The machine-tool industry became more diversified than that in France, a feat accomplished with only the first generation of industrial workers just coming from the countryside. The quality, of course, was hardly competitive on world markets, and the news in a French magazine that a French company imported Romanian machinery to melt it into steel made quite a splash. Ceau~escu's solution was low price; he was then blamed for dumping. Because he saw no chance on Western markets, he started selling machinery and even building steel or chemical factories in Third World countries on barter arrangements. In the early 1980s, Romania became Eastern Europe's biggest aid donor to the developing world, second only to the USSR. Another folly of his was the building of a vast oil-refining capacity. Although oil extraction in Romania had sunk from 14-15 million tons of crude oil annually to under 10 million, he increased the refining capacity to 25.4 million tons and, unperturbed by the oil crisis of 19741975, continued to build it up to 36 million tons-an absolutely insane drive. Since the Soviets refused to supply us with more than 1 million

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tons annually, by 1981 Romania was already faced with having nearly a third of its refining capacity idle. But then Ceau~escu had another crazy idea: He built quite a few thermoelectric plants that used coal from newly opened coal mines in Oltenia, but the coal proved to have very low caloric power and to contain hard minerals that destroyed the machines. The geologist who had discovered the mines got a fabulous prize from Ceau~escu and then fled to the West. He knew what kind of coal he had discovered. Decisionmaking on economic matters was Ceau~escu's favorite hobby. Every visit to a judet ended up with changes in the state economic plan; the staff of the region lived in terror whenever such a visit was announced. A true story reveals the inside mechanism of the decisionmaking process. A mathematician friend of mine, Bebe Bereanu, was invited once to the state planning committee. The chairman offered him coffee with some French cognac and said: "We were told you are a world-renowned specialist in operation research and able to find the optimal solution to the placement of new economic units. Well, we want to build an aluminum factory." And he went to the map of Romania hanging on the wall and, pointing to the town of Slatina, in Oltenia, said: "Comrade Ceau~escu has decided to build it here." Bereanu was amazed: "If you have already decided the place, what do you need me for?" The answer was quick: "Simply to demonstrate that the decision is scientific!" My Relations with Ceaiqescu The fact that only one of my books was published in Romanian during the Ceau~escu era (The Dialectic of World Politics) raises the issue of my relations with the dictator. Some special relationship was involved, a strange mixture of contradictory feelings: mutual respect and mutual hate. I admired his courage, political and even intellectual, for during the Gheorghiu-Dej years Ceau~escu was the only Politburo member who dared to take issue with the old man in front of the comrades. Ceau~escu knew I respected that, because I told him so in a few instances, which enchanted him. Once, in the late 1970s, I was one of the few comrades outside the power structure invited to the Central Committee to read the verbatim record of the Brezhnev-Ceau~escu meeting in Moscow, and his chief aide Manea told me on the phone: "The comrade personally put you on the list." Leonid Brezhnev had called Ceau~escu to reproach him in quite a brutal manner about his statement that the Soviet Union was considered equally responsible with the United States for the insane

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nuclear race. Ceau~escu's refutation, in a remarkable and persuasive discourse, was devastating. The old Kremlin bear was simply confounded and could only stutter a few insulting adjectives. The reading of the verbatim record impressed me so deeply that I told the cabinet aide I would like to see the president. He received me immediately, though two of his close associates, Manea Manescu and Constantin Dinca, were in his office; he asked them to leave us alone. I told Ceau~escu that I wanted to congratulate him not so much for courage, which did not surprise me, but rather for the solid and brilliant demonstration, absolutely first-class, of his reply. Ceau~escu was evidently overjoyed, but surprisingly he made a remark that somewhat minimized his personal merit: "You know, Comrade Brucan, that man Leonid is not very smart. If I'd had to deal with Khrushchev, things would not have gone so easily." I had another occasion to test our special relations. In those same years, the students at the Institute of Architecture set up a discussion club in the basement of the building and invited me to give a lecture on the international situation. After the lecture, a student asked why Romania did not raise at the United Nations the issue of the USSR's annexation of Bessarabia. I explained that the Final Act of Helsinki forbids any territorial revision in Europe and added that if Romania set a precedent in this respect, Hungary might also raise the question of recovering Transylvania. A Securitate agent wrote a report about the meeting accusing me of "irredentist propaganda," and the report reached Leonte Rautu, propaganda director of the Central Committee. With his well-known revolutionary vigilance, Rautu instructed Cornel Pacoste, the secretary of the University Center and the rector of my institute, to summon me to a meeting and call me to order. At that meeting I told the two that I was surprised they could take seriously such an absurd allegation and that I had nothing to explain. I found out later that Rautu went to Ceau~escu proposing that I be reprimanded, but the latter had dismissed the whole story and told Rautu in front of other comrades: "Leave Brucan alone." Indeed, the case was disposed of. Ceau~escu knew very well that on issues of foreign policy we thought alike. He certainly remembered that in 1956 I had advocated before the Politburo the need for an independent policy vis-a-vis the USSR; of course, he tried to forget that on that occasion he had argued against desatellitization. From the abstracts of my books he obtained from Securitate, he knew I treated both superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, as having worldwide imperialistic designs. That was probably why my book dealing with the theory of international relations was published in Romania-it was a convenient theoretical and scientific background for his foreign policy. As for me, I was proud

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of Romania's foreign policy in those years, and I often mentioned the merits of that policy in my lectures at American universities, particularly the daring condemnation of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. While my decision to resign from the government when Ceau§escu took power probably did not please him, I must admit that for almost fifteen years I got my passport whenever I was invited to foreign universities or international conferences. ~tefan Andrei, as Central Committee secretary for external relations and later as minister of foreign affairs, gave his approval rather promptly. After each trip, I sent him a report about my activities abroad, mentioning in particular the political contacts in Washington. Whenever a new book of mine was published in the United Sates, I sent an autographed copy to Ceau§escu, and his secretary told me that "the boss put it on the shelves of his bookcase." (During my 1989 arrest and investigation I discovered that all of my books had been translated and distributed in a "limited and exclusive circulation.") However, in the 1980s our relations deteriorated. I was summoned to the Central Committee by Eugen Florescu, chief of the propaganda section. As I entered his office, I saw on a table my articles published abroad in which I formulated a critique of economic and cultural policies in communist countries and an analysis of theoretical lacunae in Marx and Lenin. Florescu asked me how I dared to publish in the foreign press articles contrary to our party's policies. I replied that I was also prepared to publish articles in our newspapers, and I emphasized that none of the incriminated items had any reference to Romania. (This was always my tactic, my intent being to avoid reactions of the authorities that could lead either to a ban on traveling or to the interdiction to return home.) Florescu became furious, started threatening me, and concluded that from then on I would no longer get my passport to travel. The next day, I notified the universities and associations abroad that I could no longer participate in their programs and activities. The followup was an avalanche of cables and letters addressed to Ceau§eScu and ~tefan Andrei. When Secretary of State Alexander Haig came to Bucharest, on top of the list of human rights violations was the name of Silviu Brucan. My American friends and colleagues had done a good job. Indeed, ~tefan Andrei telephoned to tell me that from then on I should inform him about every invitation from abroad and he would make sure I got my passport on time. He let me know that it was Ceau§escu's order. To be frank, I must state that for twenty years of the Ceau§escu erauntil 1987, when I took a public stand against his regime-I enjoyed a

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relatively privileged position in Romania. Very few Romanian intellectuals could travel abroad that much and publish four books in English dealing with social and political problems. Truly, from the Securitate dossiers I eventually obtained, it appears that from 1966, when I resigned from the government, I was under strict surveillance; I found photocopies of letters from abroad, tapes of long-distance calls, and annual reports of my bank accounts in U.S. dollars. Even some checks in the mail had been confiscated. In 1978, the minister of education suggested that I renounce my professorship and retire. He hinted that the idea had come from the Central Committee and argued that because of recent instructions from Elena Ceau~escu strictly forbidding professors from traveling abroad during the school year, he could not approve my request to go as a visiting professor to Dartmouth College for a semester. The minister added a personal piece of advice: Since my course on social sciences was attended by many students from other faculties, some "state organs have been alerted" and I could get into trouble. Clearly they preferred that I teach abroad rather than at home. Hence, I decided to resign. Later, I think it was in 1981, when I returned home from a trimester at the Sorbonne in Paris, I had a surprise guest. Constantin Enache, propaganda secretary of the Central Committee and my neighbor in Herastrau Street, came to tell me that we were approaching, in January, the anniversary of Comrade Ceau~escu and it would be appropriate for me, as a famous expert in international relations, to write for Scfnteia a long article on his achievements in foreign policy. I replied that I needed time to give it some thought, and the next day I took my wife to our favorite resort area in the mountains, Poiana Bra~ov. I suppose Enache got the message and did not insist. However, I should mention that he had accompanied his proposal with a "bait": Since I had problems with my exit visas and passport, he could arrange for me to get a sort of "passport to bearer" (a document that eliminates the need for exit visas and permits travel anytime). It was one of the favors Ceau~escu granted to the intellectuals he wanted to buy, but I did not take the bait. All in all, in those years I did not have a bad time. Although my salary fell-as a dignitary (1962-1966), I made 6,000 lei on the payroll plus 5,000 lei in a special envelope, but my pay dropped to under 4,000 lei-I easily made up the difference with my income of U.S. dollars provided by the universities in the United States, England, or France and by the royalties of my books published abroad. In American terms, I belonged to the upper-middle class. With the one-month stipend I got in California (1969-1970) I bought an automatic-transmission

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Opel Rekord that lasted over twenty years, until I was evicted in 1989 to a rural-type shack at the outskirts of Bucharest and had to sell it to keep the neighbors from looking at it as if it were a flying saucer. I had a bank account in dollars and could buy at the special shops of Comturist all the goodies that were in short supply in the food stores, and although I no longer belonged to the nomenklatura, I could still use the special hospitals and polyclinics for old "underground" party members. I mention all these factors not to boast about but rather to emphasize that the acts of dissidence and public protest against Ceau~escu's dictatorship I started in 1987 were not motivated by material privations or suffering. I lived very well from this viewpoint, and many people were astonished that I risked my well-being with my political actions. Some of them do not understand even today why I did it, particularly when they saw that I gave up a position of power so easily after the revolution.

The Orchestrated Cult Nothing was left to chance during Ceau~escu's reign. Even the cult of personality was carefully orchestrated, and not by his associates or sycophants but by the conductor himself. Before a mass meeting, parade, or stage-managed pageant, the cheerleaders were convened at party headquarters and told the slogan of the day, and of course, what historical merits of the "Conducdtor" had to be shouted into the microphones in the plaza or in the conference hall. Stalin and Mao were beginners in the art. Although they had led the way, they were amateurs. Ceau~escu was a pro. He raised his own cult to paroxysmal dimensions, keeping in mind that, unlike his two masters, he was handicapped by the small size of his nation. Nevertheless, he described himself as the most original and important living Marxist thinker and, for Romanian consumption, not merely the personal reincarnation of the national struggle for independence and social liberation but the only hope left to a world maddened by superpower confrontation and the insane nuclear race. Of course, he was surrounded by writers, poets, painters, and musicians competing for his favors: Idol of the people, savior of the nation's independence-these were the major themes. But then he became the man of the "vision thing," the apostle, synthesis of the Latin genius, or personification of the neo-Roman tradition, superman of dizzying simplicity, and yet the genius of the Carpathians. Eventually he started to believe he was a superman and was quoted to have said: "A man like me comes along only once in a millennium!" (Romanians used to joke

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that Ceau~escu came before the Lord because he was the one who created chaos.) Quoting Ceau~escu in every book to be published was not only a form of ritual mass but also a must-a condition for reaching the printing stage. My only book published during the Ceau~escu era in Romanian was stopped in the propaganda section of the Central Committee because it did not include quotations from Ceau~escu. The man in charge, the dreaded chief of censorship exercised by the Ministry of Culture, Mihai Dulea, visited me at Elias Hospital, where I was undergoing surgery, and said the book could not be published in the present form. He brought with him two of Ceau~escu's quotations-one obligatory in the preface-and promised that if I agreed to include them he would get the book published. I eliminated a couple of adjectives, and Dulea kept his word.

Why Did He Last That Long? How was it possible for a regime so tyrannical, brutal, and evidently unpopular to last for a quarter of a century? That question has haunted sociologists and economists in the West as well as in Romania. Some of them have emphasized that Romania originally was a peasant society, and "mamaliga (corn mash) does not explode" because conformity, passivity, and deference to authority are typical features of a peasant political culture. Here I could add that, historically, modern democracy (as distinct from the ancient one, symbolized by Athens) is essentially an urban phenomenon, which took shape only with the formation of towns and cities. This could well be an explanation for China's recent history; there the struggle of students and intellectuals for democratic freedoms has had little impact because 80 percent of the population is still living in the countryside. Other authors have recalled the legacy of the Ottoman Empire with its tradition of baksheesh and the Greek Phanariots who left us the legacy of bribery and "special connections to those in power," claiming that these features made up the Balkan mentality, defined as passivity, skepticism of public organizations, stress on individual solutions, and strong links to the family. There is something in all these theories that is relevant to the peculiar attitude of Romanians. But the basic explanation lies in the social changes taking place in Romania as a result of the industrialization drive that started in the 1950s and reached a climax in the late 1970s. Whereas in 1948 only 3.8 million people lived in urban centers, by 1980 the urban population was 11-12 million strong. In brief, about 7 million people moved from villages to the cities, and most of them

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joined the industrial labor force. From the beginning, the Communist Party consistently courted the new workers, providing them with conditions of urban life that, however poor and wearisome, were incomparably better than the "idiocy of rural life" they had left behind. Career and educational opportunities on an unprecedented level opened up before millions of uprooted peasants entering the new industrial plants. The industrial worker of peasant origin became the ideal social base for the Romanian Communist Party. Incapable of exercising power themselves in a modern industrial society, the peasants-turned-workers needed a vanguard to exercise power on their behalf. They brought with them village traditions: There was no urge for organization; political expression seemed superfluous; freedom of the press was not a dream. In short, this political culture made the new workers the perfect object of the "revolution from above." In its turn, the ruling party bureaucracy acquired perfect ideological credentials and political legitimacy on the ground that the regime was based on and devoted to the true industrial workers who built socialism with their own hands. The trouble is that this mutually rewarding arrangement was upset by the computer and information revolution, which actually diminished the number, social status, and prestige of manual workers while increasing the number of intellectuals and enhancing their status and role in society. This was something the Ceau~escus could not swallow. The very perception of that social effect of the technological revolution prompted Ceau~escu, as well as Brezhnev and company, to resist its assimilation by the civilian industrial process. Hence, at a time when in all Western countries a series of scientific breakthroughs were incorporated on a large scale into the industrial technology, resulting in a considerable expansion of productive forces, the Soviet Union and the East European countries experienced a sharp drop in their rates of economic growth: from 10 percent in 1960 to 3 percent in the early 1980s. Why did the socialist states experience such sluggish growth at a time of tremendous discoveries of new technologies? To find the answer I examined the wage policy in those countries: Whereas in the Khrushchev era the differential in favor of engineers and specialists rose to 48.8 percent in industry and 55.8 percent in construction, in the Brezhnev era policies shifted back in favor of manual workers, resulting in a reduction of this differential to a mere 10 percent, and in some industries, the average earnings of workers topped those of engineers. In retrospect, we now realize that the leadership in the East refused to sacrifice the preeminence of the industrial worker (the social base of the party) on the altar of the technological revolu-

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tion and to grant the intelligentsia the leading social position in society that revolution required. The conservative backlash in cultural and artistic life in the 1970s was the other facet of that basic class policy. In Romania the antiintellectual policy was applied on a front larger than anything seen in the East-from wage policy to the whole gamut of educational, scientific, and artistic activity. An engineer with ten years' experience and specialization in Britain in numerical-control machines earned 3,500 lei monthly; another with experience in Japan in optical instruments earned 3-,300 lei monthly. Yet the average wage of a worker in the coal and oil industries was 4,000 lei monthly. Like Brezhnev, Ceau~escu began to talk about the reproletarianization of the party and ordered the party organizations to intensify the enrollment of workers. State measures designed to downgrade or reduce the role of intellectuals came one after the other. It started with the decision to annul the special stipend for members of the Academy; royalties for books and scientific articles were dramatically reduced; state subsidies for filmmaking, operas, theaters, symphonic orchestras, and artwork purchases were cut to the bone. While the young were steered to vocational and technical schools, the number of students went down from year to year (181,200 in 1982; 174,000 in 1983; 166,300 in 1984; 139,800 in 1985). These findings led me to compare international social factors because East-West competition traditionally has been measured only in economic terms. I discovered that in the 1970s the social gap between the two blocs also got wider. In the West, the technological revolution accelerated three major social processes: The labor force in agriculture was drastically reduced, the numbers of industrial workers diminished substantially, and employment in services increased rapidly. In Romania, as in the whole East, conservative policies slowed all three processes; the preservation of the social structure the Communist Party considered essential for its own perpetuation turned into a factor retarding national development. Ceau~escu's ultrarevolutionary rhetoric was nothing but a coverup for a deeply conservative social policy. The price of his reign is tragic: We are ten to fifteen years behind Western Europe and four times poorer. In sum, Ceau~escu's regime enjoyed stability so long as the unwritten "social contract" between the Communist Party and the working class was strictly observed. The basic provision of that contract assumed the party's obligation to ensure workers a decent standard of living; in exchange, workers agreed to work hard (fifty and even sixty hours a week) provided the party's economic policy brought continuous and tangible improvement in their well-being. Until the late

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1970s, each side kept its end of the bargain, and the regime seemed fairly stable. The Communist Party was able to keep everything under control and consequently remained the main instrument of power. In the early 1980s, however, the economic situation began to deteriorate: Shortages of food, heating, and electricity struck the population, and the living standard of most of the work force went from bad to worse. As I pointed out in my public statement after the Bra~ov riots in 1987: "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 .... The Bra~ov eruption signals that the cup of privations is now full, and the working class no longer accepts being treated like an obedient servant." Indeed, the Communist Party was now ineffective, and the main instrument of Ceau~escu's power became the Securitate. Repression was the name of the game in the fourth phase of Ceau~escu's reign. Why Did Communism Fail?

In my article of 3 September 1987 in the International Herald Tribune, I rebuked those who emphasized the resistance in Eastern Europe to Gorbachev's drive for change, and I concluded with a prophecy: "By 1990 a new political generation will be in command all over Eastern Europe." I had issued an earlier warning in 1986 in the preface to World Socialism at the Crossroads: "This book was prompted by the prospect I envision that unless the socialist societies of the East adapt their system to the scientific-technological revolution (at least to the extent that the West already has), socialism will remain caught in the twentieth century."2 The East certainly did not make it. And the explanation for this does not lie on what Fernand Braudel called evenementiel explanation-that is, episodic or event-oriented analysis that attaches primary importance to the immediate context. Communism was indeed beset by such defects as corruption, abuses of power, repression, nepotism, food shortages, and big lies. But one must dig deeper into Braudel's other explanatory framework: le conjoncturel, which shifts the emphasis to structural or cyclic causes. As a great historical experiment, communism was based on three assumptions formulated by Marx in the midnineteenth century for industrial societies and adapted later by Lenin to Russia's underdeveloped society: First, because of industrialization, an ever-increasing working class would dominate the political arena and would thus acquire power and put an end to capitalism. Such a class was lacking in Russia, and thus Lenin settled for an insurrection that seized power

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and established the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. Second, as the working class became numerically and politically dominant, society would become homogeneous. Third, the Communist Party, initially conceived as the vanguard of the proletariat, would become the leading political force of society and the party of the future, on the grounds that it represented a class that embodied the most advanced emerging productive forces. However, the modern scientific-technological revolution invalidated all these assumptions one by one. Instead of more industrial workers, they diminished in number. Instead of homogenization, a process of social differentiation occurred; there emerged quite a few socio-occupational groups having different interests and aspirationsfrom unskilled workers to specialists, engineers, white-collar functionaries, state administrative personnel, service employees, and creative intellectual professionals. In brief, the technological revolution virtually destroyed the notion of the working class as a large, compact sociological unit. Finally, in the age of computers and the information society, the industrial worker can hardly be described as the embodiment of the most advanced productive process. Thus a legitimate question arises: How can the Communist Party, which is supposed to represent that worker, remain the political vanguard of society and the party of the future? Nevertheless, I did not immediately reach the final logical conclusion. In 1986 and 1987, while arguing that in a socially differentiated society political pluralism was essential, I still thought and wrote that pluralism was also possible within the Communist Party provided it renounced the monolithic conception that had made it intolerant and repressive. I still entertained the illusion that Gorbachev, who had made such fantastic breakthroughs in Soviet thinking and policies, could make that one, too. But the leopard could not change its spots. When it came to reforming the core of the system-the Communist Party itself-Gorbachev balked. At the 1988 party conference, I noted "the first contradictory political development since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 11 : The conference decided that the party leader at each level should be automatically nominated to head the local soviet. The following paragraph of my critical article made quite a splash in Moscow; it was broadcast by the Voice of America and Radio Liberty in Russian: The fact is that we are presented with a merger of party and state leadership from top to bottom to be institutionalized as never before in Soviet history. Romania is the only socialist country to have experienced such a merger for the last 15 years, with local party secretaries accumulating the

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functions of prefects and mayors down to the smallest village. As a Romanian Marxist, I am quite amazed that reformers in Moscow should want to emulate that model. 3

During my November 1988 Moscow visit, this article was mentioned quite often both in scientific institutes and in the Kremlin. Eventually, the proposed provision in the new electoral law was dropped. In brief, from a strictly scientific viewpoint, I was fully prepared for the anticommunist revolution in Romania. Sentimentally, I was not. And it will take me some time to decide what is worth retaining from my communist past-the values that will survive the debacle of communism, some of which, I think, will never die. I am positive that the idea of social justice, embedded in the conscience of good people since time immemorial, will surface again in its communist definition: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." I cannot think of a better definition-and as such, this principle is worth surpassing capitalism. The search for social justice cannot and will not go away, not in a world that is 20 percent rich and 80 percent poor. I also hope that the idea of internationalism as the modern conception of the brotherhood of men and women, irrespective of race, nationality, and religion, will eventually prevail over the current divisions, rivalries, and hate instincts. This noble idea has been perverted and manipulated, but that does not mean it is not worth fighting for. I, for one, will do so. Such ideas of communism are as old as the philosophical quest for the good society, and the failure of state socialism is unlikely to end a quest that has endured for millennia.

9

The Prelude of the Romanian Revolution

Quite a few books have been published in the West about the December 1989 revolution in Romania. The subject was hot. Writers with a fast pen signed contracts with publishers, jumped on the first flight to Bucharest, stayed two or three weeks in a glamorous hotel, interviewed people who knew more or less what had happened, and abracadabra!-the manuscript was ready. Provisions in these contracts linked publication to market demand. As for interpretation, the popular explosion that took place in Bucharest in late December 1989 had nothing sensational in it. A spontaneous popular movement never makes an exciting story except on television, which people have seen anyway; it doesn't make a best-seller. The thrust had to be a coup d'etat, a military conspiracy, or something staged by the KGB or foreign powers. That the KGB could hardly cope with the social convulsions and political upheavals at home did not unduly bother the enterprising writers facing deadlines. They wrote their stories and got their royalties. The French were the first; the British and Americans followed suit. It was merely a matter of mileage. All of their books were "Bon pour l'Occident." Facts were so distorted and interpretations so farfetched that the books could not pass muster with Romanian readers who knew better. Some Romanian weeklies that cropped up after the revolution like mushrooms printed their most sensational parts, but they never came out in book form.

The Abortive Military Coup I do not propose to tell here the complete story of the Romanian dissidence or opposition. This is a formidable undertaking requiring painstaking research, interviews, travel-in brief, professional work by a his131

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torian. However, I do try to reconstruct the conspiracy against Ceau~escu's regime that had an apparent affect on both the revolution and the new power structure set up on that occasion. While growing public dissatisfaction and anger were indeed the main cause of the popular rebellion that broke out in Timi~oara and Bucharest at the end of December 1989, for several years there had been a clear scenario for ousting Ceau~escu from power and preparing new leadership. The fusion between those two lines of action was impossible under Ceau~escu's repressive dictatorship, which was not only brutal but also effective. This is why the question arose in the international press about whether the December 1989 upheaval was a popular revolt or a coup d'etat. I submit it was a combination of both, and this is what sets the Romanian revolution apart from the other revolutions in Eastern Europe. The discussion about the ways and means to overthrow Ceau~escu started in the late 1970s. I recall that the primary assumption was that Ceau~escu's dictatorship relied on three main pillars: the party, the army, and the Securitate. The generals taking part in the discussion made the point that because none of the three could be approached head on, the appropriate strategy was to open a breach in each of them and then to synchronize their subversive activities. The first attempt to stage a military coup occurred in 1976. The idea came from the defense minister, General Ion lonita, who conspired with the army chief of staff, General Ion Gheorghe. Indeed, they were in a position to stage the coup from a strictly military viewpoint. I know them both, but I was in contact only with General Ionita. After appraising the situation realistically, we concluded that the working class and the population at large were not yet prepared for such a coup de force and would not support it. Finally, the two men gave up the idea. The project was revived in 1983-1984 when the economic situation in the country was beginning to deteriorate seriously. General Ionita was no longer minister of defense. He had been sent into retirement, for one thing because he refused to promote Nicolae Ceau~escu's brother Ilie from major directly to the rank of general. But Ionita managed to win the backing of General Nicolae Militaru and General ~tefan Costyal, who had been his classmates at the Voroshilov military academy in Moscow from 1956to1958. At the time, both General Ionita and General Militaru were in contact with Ion Iliescu, who was considered by all of us the best man to replace Ceau~escu as the leader of the Communist Party. Iliescu had held important positions in the party as secretary-general of the Union of Communist Youth and chief of the propaganda section of the Central Committee. In 1971, when Ceau~escu returned from a trip to

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China and North Korea with an apparent turn of mind for the "cultural revolution," Iliescu expressed his disagreement within party conclaves. Ceau~escu decided then to marginalize him from the center, dispatching Iliescu to Ia~i and Timi~oara as local party secretary and later appointing him minister of water facilities. In other words, Iliescu was a dissident who played by party rules, which allowed expression of nonconformist views only within the framework of party organs or organizations. His position, reiterated in 1990, 1 was that because of the repressive nature of Ceau~escu's dictatorship, "in Romania the initiation of measures of change within the system have not been possible"-a rationalization of political passivity that those who were active dissidents could not agree with. In practical terms, Iliescu tried to discourage Ionita and Militaru from organizing the military coup, considering it a "dangerous exercise." Nevertheless, the generals went ahead with their plans. The assumption was that the coup should be mounted when the Ceau~escus were abroad on a state visit. The generals noted that when the 1977 earthquake hit Romania while the couple was visiting an African country the entire state apparatus had been paralyzed; even news about the disaster had been withheld until phone communication was established with the African capital and Ceau~escu told them how to formulate the official press release. But in order to prepare the coup, we had to know in advance the schedule of state visits abroad, and this information was secret. We approached some high officials cautiously but without success. Eventually, loan Ursu, a member of the Political Executive Committee, agreed to cooperate and supplied a schedule of state visits for the next six months. (Ursu, a doctor in physics, had received a Fulbright fellowship in the late 1950s and come to Washington while I was Romania's ambassador there; that is how we became close friends.) The plotters decided to move into action in October 1984 when the Ceau~escus were scheduled to visit West Germany. They were counting on the support of the commanders of the Bucharest military garrison. The scenario provided as a first step rounding up the dictator's five closest aides (Emil Bobu, Constantin Dinca, Tudor Postelnicu, loan Coman, and Hie Ceau~escu) and simultaneously seizing the national radio and television networks to call on the people to rise against the leadership so as to ensure the success of the military operation. The linkage of the military coup with the popular uprising was the central idea of the scenario. Operationally, a mechanized division led by General Dumitru Pletos and a division of tanks led by General Paul Cheler, both near Bucharest, were supposed to intervene in order to keep the Securitate forces

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under control. Access to a large ammunition depot in Tirgovi~te was secured by Lt. Col. Ion Suceava, its commander. But in late September the main military unit of the Bucharest garrison was dispatched to harvest corn, and its commanding general swiftly retired, which suggested betrayal. Indeed, we later found out that two generals (S. Gomoiu and C. Popa), marginally involved in the plot, had informed the leadership. Fortunately, according to conspiracy rules, the informers knew only the part of the scenario in which they were directly involved, which saved the three main plotters from a harsher reprisal. General Costyal was arrested and then evicted to Curtea de Arge~, while Ionita and Militaru were summoned to the Central Committee by Bobu and Postelnicu, coming out only with an interdiction on seeing each other and a warning of strict surveillance of each of their moves. Three years later, General Ionita died of a highly suspect cancer. He had told me that while he was traveling in a crowded bus, he felt a stitch in his back followed soon by strong pains. Cecilia, his wife, asked for an autopsy, but the authorities rejected it. Although he was a general of the highest rank and a former defense minister, he was buried without military honors. The 1984 conspiracy was the most serious military attempt to overthrow Ceau~escu. Although the coup failed, its main players would surface in the December 1989 revolution.

The Br~ov Riots The groundwork for the 1989 upheaval was laid 15November1987 in Bra~ov, the second largest industrial city in Romania. A friend from Bra~ov drove the same evening to my house in Bucharest and described how as many as 10,000 workers from the Red Flag truck factory joined by workers from other plants, had gone on a four-hour rampage in the city. The joint march from the factory was possible because the workers were due to vote in the Sunday municipal elections, but they turned left to the city's main plaza instead of right to the voting center. For the first time one could hear in Romania workers shouting "Down with dictatorship," "Down with Ceau~escu," and "We want bread." The riots broke out when a passing police car threatened the marchers, some of whom hurled stones and bottles at the car and then stopped it, overturned it, and set it on fire. Suddenly, the crowd began singing the popular patriotic song "Awake Romanian!" (which is now the national anthem) and approached the city hall, which also housed the headquarters of the local Communist Party committee. They broke into the building and became enraged at what they saw in the main hall: a long

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table loaded with food delicacies and wines for a lavish dinner to celebrate the landslide (99 percent) election victory. That was too much for the hungry protesters. They broke windows and threw out portraits of Nicolae and Elena Ceau~escu together with files and documents, using these items to fuel a fantastic bonfire set in the middle of the plaza; the high flames could be seen a mile away. The whole city was in fever. What apparently sparked the rebellion was the fact that for two months running the workers had not received one-third of their wages as a result of the "global accord" tying wages to plan fulfillment. With domestic markets flooded and exports falling, there were no new orders being placed at the truck and tractor factories. Moreover, planned redundancies at both large operations had been announced: Five thousand workers already had been told they must leave, and many thousands more were due to be laid off. They were skilled and well educated, the elite of the working class. They had come to Bra~ov in the 1960s and been given good housing and facilities: Most wives held jobs of their own, and the children attended good local schools. Suddenly they found they would have to leave everything and find work in the coal mines or in construction elsewhere. They were desperate, destroying everything in their way. Taken by surprise, the authorities reacted only three or four hours later. Some 1,000 militia tried to restore order, but they were overwhelmed by the crowd. As the violence escalated, army tanks and troops cordoned off the entire downtown area and only then got the situation under control. Ceau~escu immediately dispatched Party Secretary Emil Babu, his right hand, and Interior Minister Tudor Postelnicu to Bra~ov, and a strong detachment of Securitate officers and investigators began arresting and interrogating workers in an attempt to identify the leaders of the insurrection. The Bra~ov workers' rebellion was an absolutely fantastic event. The question was how to break the news about it in Romania and abroad in a country so effectively sealed off. Some scant information reached West Germany through long-distance telephone calls made by remaining German inhabitants of Bra~ov (which before the war had a strong German community and was called Kronstadt). But very soon Securitate cut off such calls both ways, and even the movement of people in and out the city by car was kept under strict control. Therefore, the first thing Monday morning I went to the American Library, whose director Leslie High was a good friend. To defeat the electronic bugs in his office, I wrote on a piece of paper a brief report about the event and asked him to cable it to the State Department with the suggestion that it be broadcast back in Romanian through Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

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In the following days, gruesome news reached me from Bra~ov about the brutal repression-over 200 workers arrested and tortured to reveal the names of the organizers. There was an urgent need to come to the rescue of those brave and noble freedom fighters. In his furious madness Ceau~escu could kill them, and only the exposure of the crime before world public opinion could stop him. I looked around for volunteers and seeing nobody I decided to do it myself. One evening I invited to my house Nicholas Thorpe, BBC correspondent for Eastern Europe, and Patricia Koza, UPI correspondent, and handed them a statement: The workers' demonstration in Bra~ov is a watershed in Romania's political history as a socialist state. 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. Here, I must take issue with a misconception prevailing in the West that this regime owes its survival to the repressive organs of the state. Surely this could not explain more than two decades of political stability. In fact, the main instrument of power has been the Communist Party, with security forces playing only a marginal role and dealing especially with individual deviant cases. The party could successfully control the mass of workers because it became popular in the 1960s when a turn for the better occurred in the Romanian economy and in the standard of living of almost three million peasants who joined the urban industrial work force. There was plenty of food and there was no comparison with the "idiocy of rural life" they had left behind. In the 1980s, however, their situation went from bad to worse, and the Bra~ov eruption signals that the cup of privations is now full and the working class no longer accepts being treated like an obedient servant. The recent decree on energy is actually asking the workers to commit suicide by freezing in their bedrooms. The leadership is now facing a hard choice: mass repression, because we are dealing with thousands of workers, or a sincere effort to come to terms with their legitimate grievances. Certainly, the prevailing trend in the East today speaks loudly in favor of the second option. Repression might have incalculable repercussions both domestic and international. World public opinion is now a formidable force in the defense of human rights. Repression may only result in total isolation, this time not only from the West but also from the East. Moreover, repression will generate a rupture between the party and the working class. As a veteran party member, I am worried that such a course of action might prevail. We have seen in Poland what such a rupture means and how difficult it is for the party to regain confidence of the workers even when the best of intentions to improve their lot is apparent.

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It was my first public statement against the Ceau~escu dictatorship, and I therefore worded it carefully while keeping in mind that the stance had to be strong but equally efficient to save the victims of the repression. The impact was tremendous worldwide. Major international newspapers published the full text of the statement. The New York Times carried the story under the title "Romanian Figure Warns of Repression." Commented Le Monde: "It was the first time a current party member of Mr. Brucan's stature has taken such a stand, and it was expected to have an impact on the party hierarchy." The London Independent noted: "Mr. Brucan's comments represented an unprecedented outburst in a totalitarian state where open political dissent with President Nicolae Ceau~escu's regime is unheard of." Time magazine went further: "To Western analysts, Brucan appeared to be making the opening move in what would be a power struggle within the Romanian Communist Party leadership." But most important, the statement was broadcast in Romanian many times over by the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the BBC, and millions of my compatriots were elated. The Economist had this to say: "This flicker of defiance spread after the Bra~ov trouble, when Mr. Silviu Brucan, a former ambassador to the United States, publicly compared Romania to Poland in 1980, the year Solidarity exploded." After describing the desperate situation in Romania, the prestigious British magazine concluded: "Can the Romanians, the victims of Ceau~escu tyranny, do anything about it? Bra~ov was the first hint that they might." Indeed, the Bra~ov popular explosion was the prelude of the Romanian revolution of December 1989. The workers no longer entertained illusions about Ceau~escu, they shouted "Down with dictatorship" and sang "Awake, Romanian!" Did the campaign in the Western press and radio have any effect on Ceau~escu's repressive policies? On 3 December 1987, a meeting was convened at the Red Flag factory. The official news agency Agerpress reported: "The arbitrary and abusive cuts of wages were criticized, the manager was fired, and both the political leaders of the city and the organizers of the riots will be tried." That was an implicit admission that the workers' grievances were legitimate and that the tyrant felt the pressure of world public opinion. In brief, the daring demonstration of the Bra~ov workers changed overnight the image of Romanians as a nation of sheep, passive and docile. The stereotypical metaphor literally translated used to be "Mamaliga (a popular dish made of cornmash) does not make an explosion." Well, in Bra~ov, Romanians showed that mamdliga does explode.

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Of course, the regime clamped down swiftly. In my case, the choice was house arrest. Two militia officers were posted in front of my house, and another two at the ends of the street stopped incoming diplomatic cars. My telephone was cut off and I was kept incommunicado without mail or visitors. Initially even my son could not visit. One major in uniform told me that I was allowed to go out shopping in the morning-just shopping, he emphasized. However, my guardian angels were equipped with a walkie-talkie, and whenever I went shopping four plainclothesmen were waiting for me at the street corner. They accompanied my everywhere, even to the small store where I bought cigarettes. The idea was not only to silence my voice but also to isolate me socially, discouraging anyone from speaking to me. I was an outcast-a vivid warning to all those who wanted to follow suit. Two weeks elapsed. Then one morning a messenger from the Central Committee came to tell me that at eleven o'clock I was invited to meet with Ion Constantin, the chairman of the control commission in charge of tpe status and behavior of party members. A car would pick me up. That gave me some time to think and prepare for the confrontation. I thought it over and decided to take a sober but aggressive stand. I knew that our conversation would be recorded and every word of mine would reach Ceau~escu. Constantin was not alone. Two members of the Central Committee stood with him, one at his right, the other at his left. Even before I sat down, I launched the attack: "Comrades, I know why you invited me, but I would like to say from the outset that all measures taken against me-the house arrest, the telephone cutoff, the mail interdiction-constitute gross violations of the constitution that President Ceau~escu has sworn to respect and defend." Constantin was strictly programmed and paid no attention to my words: "Comrade Brucan, we were surprised that an old party member, as you are, could make a statement hostile to our party and to our nation. Didn't you realize that such a statement gives aid and comfort to our class enemies? Didn't you see that you were addressing the worst imperialist agencies?" I understood the tactic as an attempt to appease me and make me recant after the reprisals to which I had been subjected. That was Ceau~escu's way of dealing with deviant positions in the party, and in many cases he succeeded. After a while, I retorted: "First, I chose the BBC and UPI on the ground that the president has granted them interviews occasionally, and therefore I cannot accept the charge. Second, I considered it to be the duty of an old party member to defend the workers whenever they have legitimate grievances, and this is what

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came out of the recent meeting at the Red Flag. You wouldn't have fired the manager and the party secretary if the workers were wrong, would you?" The Central Committee member at the right, Tartulescu, could no longer control his nerves and shouted to me: "You are a traitor-you have betrayed the party and the nation!" I knew he was a newcomer in the party, so I asked him calmly: "Where were you during the war?" Taken by surprise, he remained silent for a while and then said softly: "I was a worker at Vulcan, a metallurgical plant." "Yes," I said, "You were working for the German war machine and you dare to call me a traitor. Are you not ashamed?" Constantin intervened to put an end to the discussion: "I see you don't want to be reasonable. You know the rules, so please sit down in the other room and write down a declaration analyzing your deeds and how you judge them now. On that basis we will make a decision and will let you know." So I wrote the declaration, reiterating what I had said in the meeting. That was my last dialogue with the party: a brief encounter that lasted only fifteen minutes. The house arrest lasted much longer-through the winter of 19871988. But in March U.S. Undersecretary of State John Whitehead paid a visit to Bucharest to see Ceau~escu. Romanian-American relations were already strained. Gone were the days when Ceau~escu was viewed in Washington as the communist leader who refused to tow Moscow's line on foreign affairs-who dared to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and who rejected the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and sent a Romanian team. What prevailed in 1988 was Ceau~escu's appalling record on human rights, and the U.S. Congress was considering legislation to suspend Romania's most-favored-nation trading status. One morning a messenger brought me an invitation from the U.S. embassy to a reception that Friday evening honoring Whitehead. In addition, I was invited to stay for dinner with the distinguished visitor. But very soon, the Securitate major in charge of my house arrest rang at the door and told me I was confined at home on Friday and Saturday (the days of Whitehead's visit). Since I could not go to the reception, on Saturday morning Thomas Simmons, Whitehead's assistant secretary, came to my house to visit with me. In the 1970s he had been minister-councilor at the Bucharest embassy and a good friend of mine. Speaking Romanian rather fluently, he told the militia officers he wanted to see me and showed them his identity card. They stopped

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him and urgently called the major, who told Simmons he could not enter the house. But Monday morning the state of siege ended-my telephone began to ring and the mail to come in. I was again free to move, though the plainclothesmen continued to follow me from a distance. Thanks very much, Tom! One morning in June, as I was standing in line for bread, a man right behind me who used to work in Ceau~escu's cabinet whispered to me: "General Iulian Vlad, chief of Securitate, sent a memorandum to Ceau~escu suggesting you be given a passport to travel to the United States, which you had asked for a year ago. General Vlad mentioned two reasons: One, your moral and political authority will be discredited with the trip because everybody will think you made a deal with Ceau~escu, and two, after the repressive measures that made your life miserable, you will not come back." Probably he counted on the fact that dissidents did not come back (and are not returning even now). Indeed, on 17 June I was invited at ten o'clock to the passport service, where the general in command graciously handed me the passport; at eleven o'clock I was taken by car to the university where I was expelled from the Romanian Communist Party. The proceedings were hasty, and very few hands were raised in favor of the decision. I flew to Boston, where I made a brief stopover before heading for Dartmouth College, my favorite American campus, where I intended to complete a new book, a sort of social history of the communist world-from Czechoslovakia to China with special emphasis on the USSR. While I was in town, I met with a Boston Globe reporter, who asked me why Ceau~escu had let me go only six months after I broke the rules and publicly criticized him. I answered: "Have you ever had a fishbone in your throat? You cannot spit it out, you cannot swallow it in. I was a fishbone in his throat" (25 June 1988). So Ceau~escu gave me a passport hoping to get rid of the fishbone. He did not.

Dissidence in the Party The dissident activities in the main pillar of Ceau~escu's regime, the Communist Party, were less significant and glamorous. Unquestionably, the most daring and resounding act of opposition was Constantin Parvulescu's speech at the rostrum of the eleventh party congress in 1979. One of the founding fathers of the party, the old man enjoyed tremendous authority. He rose to his feet and with a strong voice protested the transformation of the party into a deification of Ceau~escu and told the plenary meeting that he would vote against Ceau~escu's election as party leader. That fantastic act of defiance came at a time when Ceau~escu was at the apex of his power,

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nominated to be chosen as party leader for life. The same night, Parvulescu was evicted from his house. Another critic was Virgil Trofin, who had been number two in the party leadership in the 1970s. Later, as minister of coal industry, he dared to criticize Ceau§escu's disastrous investment in thermoelectric plants that used coal lacking caloric power. Trofin took advantage of his right of reply before the vote for his expulsion from the Central Committee. Hence, he was expelled from the party also and dispatched to a faraway state farm. There he soon had a heart attack, and since the ambulance was not permitted to visit him, he died. To oppose Ceau§escu in the party was indeed a risky affair, and every party member knew it. One Sunday morning in April 1988 I met Gheorghe Apostol in Herastrau Park. He had returned home from an ambassadorial post in Brazil and, through a common friend, sent me word he wanted to see me. Spring was coming and we walked on the beautiful alleys bordered by trees and bushes beginning to green. After a long and hard winter, strollers were enjoying the sun, and we both knew that among them were plainclothesmen following us. We sat on a bench, practically isolated, thinking that listening devices could not reach us-an assumption I learned later was wrong when I was under arrest. Apostol told me he had been impressed with my statement about the Bra§OV riots; he had read eagerly every comment in the international press at the embassy in Brazil. In particular, he praised the method I used of talking to foreign correspondents so that the message reached Romanians through radio stations broadcasting in Romanian. "That is political efficacy!" he emphasized. "Yes," I said, "but that was just one voice. What is required is a chorus." "By George!" he exclaimed. "That is exactly what I was thinking, and I have been talking to old comrades who agree that we should be doing something of that sort." "Yes, we cannot stand pat while young men like Radu Filipescu are risking their liberty, spreading leaflets against the abuses and crimes of Ceau§escu. People are asking: 'But where are the illegalists who dared to oppose the fascist dictatorship and the German Wehrmacht? Are they also scared by Ceau§escu?'" Eventually, we reached the conclusion of formulating a protest against the dictator's policies to be signed by a number of well-known communist dignitaries, past and present. Apostol told me he already had four comrades in mind; I promised to approach others and to think over the whole project.

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Gheorghe Apostol, born in 1913, joined the party in 1930. His political record was quite impressive. For his underground activities, he was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to three and a half years in prison and then imprisoned again from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he rose from member of the Central Committee in 1945 to the Politburo and was for a while (from 1954-1955) even first secretary of the party. However, as I have already related, Gheorghiu-Dej's deathbed wish in 1965 that Apostol be the next party leader was skillfully circumvented by Ceau~escu.

Later, at the 1969 party congress, Ceau~escu trumped up the charge of "serious deviations from proletarian morality" against Apostol, dismissing him as chairman of trade unions. To keep him away, Ceau~escu appointed Apostol ambassador to Argentina and afterward to Brazil. In brief, Apostol had serious reasons to act for Ceau~escu's downfall, and I realized he was the man to work with. I also knew he was a womanizer from the time I had been head of television-he kept asking favors for attractive ballerinas and actresses and eventually married one-but I underestimated the powerful spell his younger and attractive wife was holding him under. Our next meeting took place one month later (May 1988) at Apostol's house on Delavrancea Street. He switched on the radio to defeat the bugging of his walls and furniture, and we talked for three hours, interrupted only by the goodies and delicious homemade cake graciously served by his beautiful wife. We eventually agreed on the form of our protest-a public letter addressed to President Ceau~escu. But a problem was how to avoid the draft of the letter being seized by Securitate-agents were watching and following us all the time. I suggested we not use a written text to be read by potential signatories. That was a luxury of public life we could not afford in Romania. Instead, my idea was to establish a number of points-economic, social, political, and foreign policy-to discuss among us until we reached agreement on positions; then I would write the text and distribute it, using the same method that had proved effective in 1987. Apostol agreed and I trusted him, but for the other signatories I invented a different version: "Tell them," I said, "that one copy will be sent by mail to the president and the others to foreign correspondents posted in Bucharest." That was indeed a cover story, a naive one, but nevertheless one that could be easily swallowed by the other signatories. Typical was the reaction of the old man Parvulescu (don't forget, a participant in the Russian revolution): "I agree," he said, "provided you give another copy to L'Humanite, "the only Western paper he trusted from the old times.

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As I was leaving Apostol's house, he suggested I meet with Alexandro Barllideanu and discuss with him the economic points of our letter. Apostol arranged the visit, so in May I went to his apartment on Rabat Street to talk to Barladeanu. I found a man seriously scared, whose main preoccupation was to have an alibi-a plausible excuse for meeting me just in case Securitate asked him. Barladeanu, born in 1911, joined the party as a student in Ia~i and went to the Soviet Union where he stayed during World War II. An economist, he was appointed in 1951 minister of foreign trade, then chairman of the state planning committee. From 1962 to 1968 he was a Politburo member and was credited as being the architect of Romania's economic strategy of building socialism. As Ceau~escu came to power and began to introduce some of his extravagant economic policies, Barladeanu resisted, so the dictator sacked him into retirement.

In Washington and London In June, before flying to America, I saw Apostol and Barladeanu and departed with the proposition of studying the possibility of launching the letter abroad. I also visited U.S. Ambassador Kirk with his political counselor, Michael Parmley, and Hugh Arbuthnott, the British ambassador, to arrange with them my talks at the State Department and Foreign Office. I told them about the project of our letter to Ceau~escu so that the interlocutors in Washington and London would know the purpose of my visit. Of course, they agreed that absolute secrecy about the whole thing was essential. In the United States, I gave more thought to our scenario and concluded that the letter, to be effective, had to be made public while I was at home. Compatriots informed me that Securitate was spreading two rumors-that I had made a deal with Ceau~escu to get my passport and that I would not return home-so I decided to give interviews to both Radio Free Europe and Voice of America clearly stating my position. They were broadcast in September and contained for the first time an all-out critique of Ceau~escu's economic, social, and cultural policies and their disastrous consequences on the nation and a suggestion that the national salvation of Romania mandated a dialogue with the powers that be on ways and means to overcome the crisis. I deliberately avoided harsh language and personal attacks for the simple reason that I wanted to return home. There was always the bleak prospect of being stopped at the border and refused entry. Indeed, as we shall see, I experienced that too. . Then I started preparing my official contacts. In America I had a long meeting with Thomas Simmons, assistant undersecretary for

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Eastern Europe (now ambassador to Poland), and the officers in charge of the Romanian desk in the State Department. The November visit to London was very elaborate: It included a conference at Wilton Park, lectures at All Souls College, Oxford University, London University, and Sussex University, and an unexpected talk at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst. At the House of Commons, I was invited to dinner by Roy Hughes, Conservative M.P., and Tony Marlow, Labour M.P. The climax was the visit at the Foreign Office and the long talk with William Waldegrave, minister of state, followed by an equally interesting meeting with Martin Nicholson, Margaret Thatcher's adviser on Eastern European affairs. The ideas of my conferences were summed up by Michael Simmons in an article in The Guardian (12 November 1988) titled "Eastern Europe 'Must Reform to Survive."' And he quoted me: "If socialist societies do not adapt their system to the scientific and technological revolution, at least to the level that has now been reached by the West, they will go down in history as an abortive social experiment." My 1987 prediction that new leadership would be in place across Eastern Europe by 1990 was drawing closer to fulfillment; in Romania we had only one year to go. I can state quite positively that in both Washington and London I received clear assurances of support and encouragement for our plans. Moreover, the American and British ambassadors in Bucharest were instructed later to visit me at the time of my house arrest. The Moscow visit was more complicated but worth the undertaking. During my stay in America, I participated in two international conferences attended also by directors of two institutes of the Soviet Academy. After I presented my paper "The Crisis of the Communist Political System," both asked me to come to Moscow and lecture at their institutes on the same subject. I gladly accepted on the condition that they make the visa arrangements with Soviet authorities, which they did. Of course, I was planning to take advantage of the occasion and see some old friends in Moscow.

Promised Land Revisited The perfectly controlled landing of the Biran space shuttle during my visit to Moscow in November 1988 was one of the spectacular achievements in space and modern weaponry that helped the Soviets place one foot in the twenty-first century. But the other foot was still planted in the first half of the twentieth century, stuck solidly in a society lacking all the post-World War II breakthroughs of industrial societiesfrom mass production of consumer goods and food production to the

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House of Commons Members Roy Hughes (left) and Tony Marlow flank the author during his London trip in fall 1988 to launch the Letter of Six . (Photo courtesy of British Information Services.)

tremendous expansion of services, travel, telecommunication, and everything the age of electronics and computers entailed that made life easier, richer, and more comfortable. The lag of a whole epoch in human civilization was the real challenge of perestroika. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership, Soviets became aware of their formidable undertaking and for the first time in seventy years of Soviet power felt free to say so. This was probably Gorbachev's greatest achievement in the economic, social, and political war he started in the mid-1980s to bring the laggard foot into step with the one that marched forward.

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The visit to Moscow, my first since 1981 and ninth since 1946, allowed me to compare the 1988 situation with that in the eras of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. My first shopping venture was to GUM, the famous department store across majestic Red Square. Thousands of customers invading from all four entrances converged in a traffic jam in the middle of the store. I escaped by heading for the menswear floor. There I was thunderstruck: The suit I was looking at was the same one I had seen in 1946. I could not believe my eyes and looked again. No, it was not a hallucination. Definitely, the model, the fabric, the cut were identical. I remembered the details of the 1946 model because coming from wardevastated Bucharest to "the promised land of socialism," I had changed lots of money into rubles to buy a suit. The disappointment was great: The suit looked like one a Romanian peasant would wear on a Sunday walk on Main Street or going to church. And after forty years the model was here to stay! What had happened to Gorbachev's warning at the twenty-seventh congress in 1986 that light industry should cease producing shabby goods "mostly for the warehouses"? Even the few trendy new stores, among them Moda (Russian for "fashion") that offered quality clothing with attractive designs and fabrics seemed to be out of merchandise. When they had goods, the line of customers stretched for blocks. Where were Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent with their promise of a quick haute-couture fix for Soviet manufacturing? Where was Soviet designer Zaitzer who made such a sensation in Paris and London? What about doing something at home? Prices were not modest at all. The average monthly wage was only 200 rubles, but a man's suit cost 150-160 rubles, an overcoat 212 rubles, pajamas about 13 rubles, and a shirt 14-15 rubles. The ruble was quoted officially at U.S. $1.60. Clearly, mass production through automation, which in the West had enabled capitalism to raise living standards substantially and to give worke:r:s access to consumer goods that used to be the privilege of the rich, had not yet reached the Soviets. In agriculture the problem could be stated simply with two figures: the 200-million-ton grain harvest versus the 260 million tons economists considered necessary to meet both human and animal consumption. During the Brezhnev era, the volume of investment in agriculture had soared to 69 percent of all investment. Gorbachev initiated strong incentives for a better performance, but in collective farms individual performance was hard to sell. It became clear that only structural change would do. The excessive talk about collectivism was perhaps the most salient expression of the Soviet misconception about agriculture: the failure to accept that the decisive element in agriculture was

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the individual peasant who would carefully grow vegetables and fruits and painstakingly care for animals. The 1986 Congress had still praised the kolkhoz system. The leadership took two more years to reach the right conclusion: Lease the kolkhoz land to individual (or groups of) peasants for fifty years. Ideological prejudice was a strong retarding factor. Had Gorbachev taken that measure three years earlier, the Soviets would have had meat in 1988. They didn't. Meat stores were depressing. One on Gorki Street offered only unappetizing chunks of pork fat and bone, some fatty sausages, and lots .of chicken already brown and stiff with age. The Soviet citizenry had a joke: Before the 1917 revolution, the sign outside the meat store read "Ivan the Butcher" and inside was meat. In 1988 the sign outside read "Meat" but inside was only Ivan the butcher. On Sunday morning I went to the free market they called kholkhozniie rinok near Trubnaya Square. The huge hall was crowded, but no queues existed. Individual stalls displayed attractive fresh meats, a colorful selection of vegetables and fruits, and even fresh green herbs (it was winter). Behind the counter, peasants with a Southern Asiatic look (Georgians and Armenians) were ready to drive a hard bargain. They still showed a nice profit after flying to Moscow with their produce in baskets. Competition in the free market was fierce, business was brisk, and prices were high. Glorious red tomatoes at 8 rubles a kilo were no comparison to the small, half-green tomatoes in the state stall at 2 rubles a kilo; red and gold apples were 6 rubles a kilo while meager state-sold ones cost 2 rubles; onions were 3 rubles versus about 1 ruble at state; good pork or beef was 8 to 10 rubles a kilo. The market also had goods the state cells did not have at all, such as grapes (7 to 10 rubles a kilo), a rare delicacy in winter, and fresh spinach (8 rubles a kilo). In 1988, Moscow's social stability rested on such solid pillars as cheap bread (black at 20 kopeks a kilo, white, 30), potatoes (16 kopeks a kilo), the Metro (5 kopeks), and rent (about 10 percent of wages). Although state subsidies since 1962 to maintain such low prices had amounted to 15 percent of the national budget, Gorbachev was well advised to postpone price reform. Arenda, or land lease, was the name of the game in 1988. As Gorbachev put it: "Peasants must become the true masters of the land." Unfortunately, the masters, after fifty years of collectivism, no longer knew how to farm. The party used to tell them when to sow and when to harvest. Hence, Russians needed to learn not only democracy but also how to cultivate the land.

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Service was another sore point in the USSR during my visit. Moscow has always been an attractive but tough place for tourists. Although Sheremetyevo Airport welcomes travelers on arrival with an announcement that they can pick up their luggage in forty minutes, it took me about three hours to get from the airport to my $185-pernight room at Intourist Hotel. I needed another hour and a half to have dinner at one of the two hotel restaurants-both servicing exclusively tourists. Forget about laundry and cleaning. And what is a shoeshine? Stalin felt that the state should do everything. He nationalized even the shoe repair shops, leaving a vacuum in services that never was filled. The black market became a social necessity tacitly approved by the authorities. One of the "psychological transformations" so much talked about there in those days was how the black marketers adjusted to the 1986 Law on Individual Labor allowing twenty-nine types of private businesses to operate ranging from cafes to shoemakers and repair shops. Unlike in farming, the skilled personnel for these types of businesses were readily available. After a period of adjustment, they started operating legally. They even got bank loans, a sort of venture capital for entrepreneurs. Quite a few cafes and restaurants, eighty in Moscow alone, opened up. Right in front of the lntourist Hotel, a vendor with a white-painted wagon did a brick business selling hot sausage kebabs with lots of onions and ketchup for 1.25 rubles each. Also available was something rarely found in the hotel: coffee. Thus many tourists were enjoying their cigarettes there despite freezing temperatures. The Shaska (fairy tale) restaurant, in a two-story building smartly painted in brown, offered a lavish dinner. The service was swift, and the show included excellent acrobats and a noisy band playing modern music that no Moscow restaurant could do without. The price was high: about $40 a person. Among the recently opened cooperative restaurants, Glaznoivz stood out by Soviet standards. A sort of joint venture (thirty Soviet members plus the Belgian brewer Stella Artois), the place offered specialties of marinated wild mushrooms, pork filet stuffed with plums, tortoni ice cream, and of course lots of good beer, a novelty at a time of near-prohibition. (In many such places, patrons had to bring their own alcohol, preferably concealed in a plastic bag.) A dinner-jacketed trio played cool jazz, and a rather plump devushka with exceedingly melancholic eyes sang about blue moons and broken hearts-for those who could afford the bills. Three years of perestroika had affected daily life only slightly. The noisily launched Law on State Enterprise had been effectively sabotaged and was a flop. Central planners and party bureaucrats merely

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replaced the state plan with "state orders" that continued to determine what and how much factories produced. Realistically, Gorbachev would have needed at least ten years to prove himself in industrial restructuring. A legitimate question arises: Why did so many unresolved problems accumulate in the USSR? To find the answer, one must go back to the origin of the Soviet state. Before the 1917 revolution, Lenin emphasized that Russia, a backward peasant country, was not ripe for a socialist transformation. Therefore, the first task of the Bolshevik Party was to make the social changes required by the bourgeois-democratic revolution. But once in power Lenin forgot about the first task and remembered it only in 1921 when the country lay in ruins. He then defined the New Economic Policy: "To revive trade, petty ownership, capitalism, while cautiously and gradually making it possible to subject them to state regulation only to the extent that they revive." But Stalin, instead of reviving them, suppressed them-and with a vengeance. For trying to skip a major historical stage, the Soviets paid a heavy price. As a Russian joke had it: Before building the workers' paradise, one must go first through capitalist hell.

The Meeting with Gorbachev There is an ancient saying that could be revised: I fear journalists bringing gifts. Steve Crawshaw in The Independent (14 November 1988) made me such a gift when he wrote this about my impending visit to Moscow: "The private visit by Mr. Brucan, who was under house arrest in Romania last year, could be an important sign in the wind. Mikhail Gorbachev has long been critical of President Ceau~escu's lack of enthusiasm for perestroika, and the visit may be seen as encouragement from Moscow for dissident activity within the Romanian Communist Party." This alone was damaging enough, but Crawshaw also disclosed the name of the game: "Mr. Brucan is an old acquaintance of Anatoly Dobrynin, formerly Moscow's ambassador to Washington and now the foreign policy adviser of the Soviet leader." At a time when Gorbachev was extremely cautious to avoid the slightest inkling that he was intervening in internal affairs of East European countries, one could hardly imagine a more salient disservice to my Moscow visit. When I arrived in Moscow, I was somewhat taken aback to find the subject of my proposed lecture on East-West relations briskly turned down in favor of "Political Pluralism." My hosts said: "No, no, comrade, we don't care about East-West relations. Pluralism is what's topical in the Soviet Union, and we know you have written about that." At

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IMEMO, Moscow's most prestigious institute for world economy and international relations, I spoke for forty-five minutes, but the discussion went on for three hours. They even skipped dinner. Most of the audience knew (from Radio Liberty) about my August 1987 World Paper article in which I had questioned why the Soviet party conference would want to emulate Romania by instituting a wholesale merger of state and party leadership. This made a big hit in Moscow, for nothing could hurt the Soviet leadership harder than the charge of trying to copy the Ceau~escu model, considered the exact opposite of the Gorbachev approach. Anatoly Dobrynin arranged my meeting with Gorbachev. Dobrynin had served more than twenty years as Soviet ambassador in Washington and three years in New York as UN undersecretary and was a good friend of mine. We used to spend our weekends together, and our wives were equally close. He told me that Gorbachev was prepared to receive me provided I kept the talk with him secret. In case I spoke about it, they would deny it. The reason was apparent. I accepted the condition and have strictly observed it until now. But now that Gorbachev no longer holds public office and the USSR no longer exists, things have changed. The meeting was rather long, about one hour; there were only the two of us and an English interpreter. Gorbachev had on the table a dossier he kept looking through all the time. I assumed it was a memo prepared by his staff, because he knew fairly well the content of both the World Paper and The Independent articles; he had apparently been informed by Dobrynin about our intentions and the proposed public letter to Ceau~escu. And, of course, the file must have contained a short biography prepared by the KGB. Methodically, he started proposing an agenda with three points: (1) the issue of political reform, (2) my suggestion concerning the Baltic states, and (3) the opposition to Ceau~escu.

On the first point, I told him briefly about the merger in Romania of party and state structures and how it had been functioning for fifteen years. I emphasized two main features on the theoretical level: First, such a merger means renouncing the professed revolutionary role of the party and its independent political status, because once merged with the state, the party becomes a conservative force trying to perpetuate the existing power structure, hostile to the withering away of the state. Second, the merger comes into conflict with democracy; once the heads of local state bodies are appointed by the center as party secretaries, the elections for local soviets or councils make no sense, are a mockery.

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Gorbachev expressed his agreement, but note that in my article I had pointed out that at the top, as an exception dictated by special circumstances, the party leader might also be president, the head of the state. Yes, I retorted, since we were talking about a new "revolution from above" that would encounter resistance in both the parliament and the state apparatus, a strong type of power might be required to enforce change. Apparently, he liked the idea and said so: It suited him. Unfortunately, although he enjoyed such extraordinary executive powers, he did not use them to enforce radical changes in the economy, and when he belatedly decided to take steps toward a market economy, he was no longer enjoying either power or popular backing. The old party and state apparatus, which remained intact, disabled him systematically until they rendered him powerless-and in August 1991 organized a coup to finish him altogether. On the second point, he let me argue the proposition I had made in The Independent that the Baltic states be converted into a sort of Soviet Hong Kong or Macao because they were well equipped to play such a role: Their levels of education, technological development, and productivity, the highest in the USSR, made them the only part of the Soviet Union that could produce goods, both industrial and agricultural, that would be competitive on world markets. I pointed out that this was a basic condition for a rapid transition to a free market and for a national currency to become convertible-but that it would take the Soviet Union at least ten years to meet such demands. Gorbachev listened carefully, but when I said that the alternative policy of using pressure and force to subdue nationalism in the Baltic states would be counterproductive, he became nervous and impatient. He interrupted me and retorted briskly: "Your theoretical construct looks ingenious, but a foreigner cannot understand the nature of the national question in our land. Here, if one does not keep the unity of this ethnic conglomerate, everything will fall apart." Indeed, that is what happened. Finally, we tackled the question that grieved me-Romania. He was the one who started talking, as though he had already made up his mind. From the outset, he stated his agreement with a well-conceived scenario to topple Ceau~escu, provided it was created and carried out so as to maintain the Communist Party as the main political force in the country. This was indeed the Achille's heel in Gorbachev's approach-it reflected the specific difference between the Soviet Union, where the Communist Party remained upright during the whole Gorbachev era, and the East European nations, where the revolution shook the communist parties to their very foundation (even if a re-

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formist communist wing did initiate change). It was the difference between the original and the carbon copies. As he finished I said: "Everything depends on the behavior of those in the supreme party organ, the Executive Political Committee. You have to keep in mind that the signatories of the proposed letter, however resounding their names, are all out of power. The key is in the hands of those who hold positions of power in the party or state, in the army or the Securitate. They can make a difference, but up to now they have remained faithful to Ceau~escu."

"Nevertheless," Gorbachev repeated time and again, "the party must remain upright, otherwise there will be chaos." But he stated in categorical terms that the Soviets were not going to interfere in any way with the whole process: "Nonintervention is a sacred principle for us. Don't expect us to help you. It is your business a hundred percent." However, he promised to take care of my personal safety. Indeed, the officials found an ingenious way of doing that by instructing the Pravda correspondent in Bucharest, Stanislav Petuhov, to visit with me regularly, thus signaling to the Romanian authorities the Soviet concern for my well-being. From Moscow I took a flight to Vienna where I gave interviews to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and the BBC about my Moscow visit and thus kept my compatriots and the Romanian authorities informed (in the same way I had in London during the visit there). I used that strategy in the hope of preventing the harsh retaliation by the Securitate that could be expected once our plans materialized. The Moscow visit was particularly consequential. On my trip home from Vienna, the border officers at Curtici took my passport and ordered me to descend with my luggage. That happened around midnight in late November, in freezing temperature. I was left alone in the waiting room of the station, and the only method to resist the cold was to keep walking the whole night. At eight o'clock in the morning, the commander of the borderguards came and apologized for the "malentendu" (misunderstanding), invited me into his warm office, offered me a cup of hot tea, and told me they would put me on the next train to Bucharest. The commander was a large man, rather the rogue type, totally unaccustomed to being gentle and feeling awkward in the role he had been ordered to play. I told him my family would be frightened to discover at the Bucharest railway station that I was not on the train, and he immediately ordered his secretary to call my home and advise that I would be on the next train. In Bucharest, I found out that the order to be stopped at the border had been given before my Moscow visit. Quod erat demonstrandum.

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The Letter of Six When the BBC called me, Securitate reported it to Ceau~escu that same night: On 10 March 1989, at 20.47 [8:47 p.m.] Silviu Brucan got a long-distance call from London from Misha Glenni, BBC. "Hello, Professor Brucan?" "Yes, speaking." "I just received a letter signed by you and five other personalities. It is a letter addressed to the head of the Romanian state and I was wondering whether you could confirm that you signed it?" "Yes, sir!" "Do you know whether all signatories are well?" "Yes, they are!" "Do you consider it is possible that other communists might follow your example?" "Of course!" At that moment the conversation was cut off, and we took measures to make sure Silviu Brucan will no longer be able to make such contacts abroad.

We had done it. The text of the Letter of Six was broadcast by all Romanian-language stations and published in all major international newspapers. It made big news. The text was the following: To President Ceau~escu: At a time when the very idea of socialism, for which we have fought, is discredited by your policy, and when our country is being isolated in Europe, we have decided to speak up. We are perfectly aware that by doing so we are risking our liberty and even our lives; but we feel duty-bound to appeal to you to reverse the present course before it is too late. 1) The international community is reproaching you for nonobservance of the Helsinki final act, which you have signed yourself. Romanian citizens are reproaching you for nonobservance of the constitution, which you have sworn to observe. Here are the facts: A) The whole plan for systematization of villages [i.e.,. their "modernization" by destroying existing buildings] and the forced removal of peasants to three-story apartment blocks runs against Article 36 of the constitution, which protects the right to personal property of a household, with its annexes and the land on which it is situated. B) The decree forbidding Romanian citizens to have contact with foreigners has never been voted on by the legislative body and never been published; thus it lacks legal power. And yet our citizens are threatened with being fired, harassed, arrested, and sentenced for doing so.

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C) The Civic Center [in Bucharest], the biggest multibillion-lei investment made in Romania, has no public budget and is being built in violation of all existing laws regulating constructions and their financing. The cost of the immense building has tripled because of changes you order every month in the interior and exterior of the building. D) Securitatea [i.e., the State Security Service], which we created to defend the socialist order against the exploiting classes, is now directed against workers demanding their rights, against old members of the Party, and against honest intellectuals exercising their rights to petition (Article 34) and freedom of speech (Article 28) guaranteed by the constitution. E) Factories and institutions have been ordered to force their employees to work on Sunday against Article 19 of the constitution and the labor code. F) Mail is systematically violated and our telephone conversations are cut off in violation of Article 34, guaranteeing their privacy. To sum up, the constitution has been virtually suspended and there is no legal system in force. You must admit, Mr. President, that a society cannot function if the authorities, starting from the top, show disrespect for the law. 2) Planning no longer works in the Romanian economy. The meetings of the Executive Political Committee are all oriented toward the past [and taken up with] exhorting the workers to make up for the unfulfilled plan of the previous year, previous semester, or previous month. An increasing number of factories lack raw materials, energy, or markets. 3) Agricultural policy is also in disarray. Harsh administrative measures are directed against the peasants, who, according to your own data, provide 40 percent of the country's vegetables, 56 percent of the fruit, 60 percent of the milk, and 44 percent of the meat, though they have only 12 percent of the arable land. But, of course, what is now predominant in the villages is the fear of being "systematized," with seven or eight thousand villages threatened with being razed. Above all the economic, cultural, and humanitarian objections of the civilized world to that program, a legitimate question arises: Why urbanize villages when you cannot ensure decent conditions of urban life in the cities, namely adequate heating, lighting, transportation, not to mention food? A government that for five winters in a row has been unable to solve such vital problems for its population proves itself incompetent and incapable of governing. Therefore, we are not pressing on you any demand in this respect. 4) The very fact that Germans, Hungarians, and Jews are emigrating en masse shows that the policy of forced assimilation should be renounced. 5) Finally, we are deeply worried that Romania's international position and prestige are rapidly deteriorating. As you know, this is concretely shown by the decision of quite a few countries to close their embassies in Bucharest. Most alarming, embassies of such European nations as Denmark and Portugal have already been closed and others may follow. Our growing isolation affects not only diplomatic relations. We have lost the most-favored-nation status for trade with the United States and as a re-

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suit some of our textile factories have no orders. The EEC is unwilling to extend its trade agreement with Romania, which will negatively affect other sectors of our economy. You have always maintained that summit meetings are decisive in improving relations between states. But how are you going to improve Romania's external relations when all the leaders of the non-Communist nations of Europe refuse to meet with you? Romania is and remains a European country and as such must advance along with the Helsinki process and not turn against it. You started changing the geography of the countryside, but you cannot remove Romania to Africa. To stop the negative processes, both domestic and international, besetting our nation, we appeal to you, as a first step, to take the following measures: 1. To state categorically in unequivocal terms that you have renounced the plan of systematization of villages. 2. To restore the constitutional guarantees regarding the rights of citizens. This will enable you to observe the decisions of the Vienna Conference on Human Rights. 3. To put an end to the food exports that are threatening the biological existence of our nation. Once such measures are taken, we are prepared to participate in a constructive spirit in a dialogue with the government on the ways and means of overcoming the present impasse. Gheorghe Apostol, former member of the Politburo and chairman of trade unions; Alexandro Barladeanu, former member of the Politburo and chairman of the planning committee; Corneliu Manescu, former minister of foreign affairs and president of the UN General Assembly; Constantin Parvulescu, founding member of the Communist Party; Grigore Raceanu, veteran of the Communist Party; Silviu Brucan, former acting editor of Scinteia

What made quite a splash in Romania and abroad was the political background of five of the signatories: two former general secretaries of the Communist Party, one Politburo member, a former foreign minister who had been president of the UN General Assembly, and the acting editor of Scinteia and former ambassador to Washington. A public protest by such high-level political leaders was without precedent not only in Romania but throughout the whole East. The tyrant was mad and so was his wife. They had kept boasting that the whole party was behind them, and suddenly the Letter of Six appeared as a glaring piece of evidence that this was not true. The next day, around midnight, three cars with Securitate officers came to my house to arrest me and fetch me to that sinister building on Calea Rahovei. They were so furious they could not even speak

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clearly. They kept shouting "Traitor! American agent! Imperialist spy!" "A scum like you deserves to be shot!" cried one of them. The verbal outpouring was so violent that for a moment I thought they would kill me. Of course, they knew I had written the letter and smuggled it abroad, but how? They had followed my moves and kept evidence hour by hour. At the investigation, I descri"!Jed how on Monday, 27 February, at 8:30 a.m., I had deposited the Letter of Six in the mailbox at the postal office across the street from the Intercontinental Hotel. The investigator looked into a dossier and confirmed: "Yes, between eight and nine you were in that place, but our stupid agent reported that you bought stamps" (which I did after dispatching the letter). Indeed, the mailbox was in a corner that could not be seen from outside. I had counted on that many times before. What is more, this was my favorite post office because there was a lot of airmail in that mailbox coming from the foreign clientele of the Intercontinental, making it more difficult for the Securitate to identify mine. In retrospect, anticommunist critics blamed the Letter of Six for having a limited objective merely to "improve the system" or to advocate "socialism with a human face." They had a point. But those dissenters were hard pressed to point to any single political act that shook up the communist dictatorship the way our letter did. Anyone familiar with the rules of politics would readily understand that to be efficacious a political act should never go beyond the level of society's consciousness at the given time. In a country with 4 million party members making up the political class, the best strategy was to provoke a breach in the party by separating the mass of communists from the odious leadership. This could be done by exposing in a persuasive manner the facets of Ceau~escu's tyranny that party members found repugnant. The Letter of Six must be read in that context, for only thus can one judge a political act. The letter unmasked mercilessly the violation of the constitution and of human rights by showing the illegal nature of Ceau~escu's regime: the callousness and absurdity of the systematization of villages, the abuses and crimes by Securitate, the bankruptcy of the planned economy, the stupidity of the agrarian policy, the disastrous consequences of the policy of forced assimilation of national minorities, the flagrant isolation of Romania in Europe. The painful shortage of food, the darkened streets, and the freezing temperatures in apartments and houses completed a devastating picture that aroused even party members against Ceau~escu. And the proof of the pudding in December 1989 was in the 60,000 party members who participated in the Timi~oara rebellion and the thousands of communists who came in the morning of 22 December from the industrial

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platforms of Bucharest to join the popular explosion in the palace plaza. It was that information that made Ceau~escu flee. Yes, because the mass of party members were disenchanted with Ceau~escu, they turned against him. Further proof of the pudding is the fact that all political parties, whether in power or in opposition, that took shape after the revolution numbered a lot of former communists in their leading organs. (This was true for the former Soviet Union as well: The most ardent opposition leaders to the dominant Communist Party, starting with Boris Yeltsin, had been members of the party, some of them very prominent ones.) Actually, this is what this book is all about: To become a convinced anticommunist, one has to go first through a party experience. What a strange modern version of the purgatory!

Securitate: Ceaiqescu's Praetorian Guard I spent two months of 1989 in the daily company of Securitate, and as one of my dossiers reveals, officers and agents had been closely following my moves, writings, and teaching ever since 1966, when I resigned a government position and became thus a "suspect." Even my books published in English were translated into Romanian by Securitate (without adherence to copyrights not to mention royalties). I thus know something about the workings of Securitate. Let me start with the opening statement of 12 March 1989 of the chief investigator, Lt. Col. Emil Radulescu: "Not only have I followed every move of yours, not only have I read all your books and articles (what a tough assignment!), but I also have studied your psychology. And when General Vlad proposed you should be given a passport to travel abroad with the hope that you would not return, I told him: 'This man will certainly come back and he will give us trouble again.' If they had taken my advice, you would have been arrested a long time ago, and there would be no Letter of Six today!" Lt. Col. Radulescu was the chief of a special Securitate division that watched foreign embassies in Bucharest and their contacts with Romanian citizens. He was a real professional, a tough investigator asking the right questions well prepared in advance, and civilized most of the time, but he was rude and scant of courtesy when he was coming from a meeting in which a superior or someone had blamed him for not exacting from me the statement or admission that was required. Then he would fling mud, calling me names like "foreign agent," and "traitor" and threatening to incarcerate me in the basement. Verbal violence never turned physical-I was never beaten or tortured-but they resorted to a treacherous method called "nonsleep," assigning three investigators in shifts to question me nonstop for twenty-four hours. Un-

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der those conditions the desire to go to bed is so strong that it is tempting to say anything to get some sleep. After two such sessions, I reacted with the "keep-silent" method. The moment I felt tired, I told them: "From now on I'll keep quiet. Read my lips: No answers!" Happily, they had orders to take me home after dark and fetch me back in the early morning. This included weekends, but I could read papers and listen to the BBC and Radio Free Europe at night. General Iulian Vlad, the chief of Securitate, stated time and again that Securitate acted only according to the laws and faithfully observed civilized standards. Among the Securitate files I managed to obtain was a handwritten document "Note on proposed measures to be taken in the case of Silviu Brucan." It was signed by Major General Aurelian Mortoiu, chief of the Third Division, and dated 11March1989, right after the BBC broadcast of the Letter of Six. What did the general propose? At point D: "To act in order to change in a conventional way the jobs of the daughter and son-in-law of Silviu Brucan." The word "conventional" meant my daughter Anca was fired from the television studio, and my son-in-law, architect Mircea Nicolae, was dispatched to a faraway city, Calara~i. Point F: "In case he is seen walking on the street after dark, let us organize an aggression on him and on that occasion mug him." And then the general hits the jackpot: "To study Brucan's behavior while he is shopping at Comturist [special shops using hard currency] to see whether in such circumstances one could slip into his pocket a $100 bill so that at the exit a militia officer arrests him for illegal possession of hard currency." So much for the legal methods and civilized manners of Securitate. The apparatus of Securitate was enormous numerically and was allpervasive, intruding into every facet of Romanian life-in institutions and enterprises, in homes and on streets, and even in bedrooms. Whereas during Antonescu's fascist regime I was watched and followed by a single security agent, during my house arrest in the 1980s Securitate mobilized up to seven agents, a typical manifestation of manpower waste and redundancy in the communist system. I calculated that simply keeping me under watch and guard in my housethe staff, cars, and overtime-cost the Romanian state 200,000 lei a month. I became somewhat conceited that the government was spending so much money on me at a time when the average monthly wage was 2,500 lei. There were about 700,000 informers on the takethe eyes and ears of Ceau~escu-and about 10,000 street agents in Bucharest alone. The so-called guys with black trenchcoats and hats could be seen every fifty meters on Calea Victoriei or Calea Dorobanti,

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where the presidential motorcade used to speed up on deserted streets with all traffic stopped well in advance. There were three police cars in front and three behind the presidential limousine in blue: he at eight in the morning, she around ten o'clock with her Renault 18 and the two Labrador dogs in the backseat-a typical feature of Bucharest daily life. Technologically, Securitate was up-to-date, and its forte was electronics. I used to walk with Apostol in Herastrau Park by the lake. No human being could be seen for at least a mile, and we thus felt safe talking about our plans. When I was under arrest, the investigator quoted bits of our conversation-fortunately not the whole thing. Once I visited a friend living on the fifth floor of a huge apartment building on Calea Victoriei. I had not seen him in years. An old man who never cared about politics, he lived in absolute seclusion with his wife. From a public telephone I warned him I was coming. I stayed there about an hour or so and discussed especially some money business. Well, at the investigation they showed me a verbatim record of our whole conversation on tape. I congratulated them: "You are technologically in 1990 but politically in 1950!" My dossier was full of transcripts of tapes translated from Englishmy talks with the American, British, and French ambassadors at their i:esidences, including small talk at dinners. Even at cocktails and receptions, which are usually very noisy, they could technically isolate my dialogue with Western diplomats from the surrounding conversations. One day, I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant with the British press attache, Mehmet Alper. The hostess offered us a table, and although I thought I was smart by choosing another one, our talk was perfectly taped. Two famous dissident writers, Mircea Dinescu and Dan De§liu, made quite a sensation while having lunch at the Writers' Union canteen; they discovered a plate was bugged. De§liU escaped with the "magic plate," followed by desperate agents trying to recover it. My biggest surprise was to discover Securitate had a "mole" in the American embassy. I heard his voice on tape saying to his contact man that I had given a copy of the Letter of Six to Michael Parmley, the political counselor at the U.S. embassy. Indeed, I did. The moment I reached an agreement with Apostol about the points to be dealt with in the letter, I wrote the English text in two copies and airmailed them to the private addresses in London and Vienna I had established during my visits in 1988-one for the BBC, the other for Associated Press. Obviously, I could not mention these agencies on the envelope, for Securitate would have seized them. But when eight or nine days elapsed and nothing moved either in London or Vienna, I was afraid the letters had been intercepted and I would be arrested without ac-

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complishing my mission. So I wrote a third English text by hand, and taking advantage of a cocktail, I handed it over to Parmley and told the British counselor and Dutch ambassador about it. In the meantime, the London letter reached the BBC and was broadcast, and I was arrested by Securitate and confronted with two of the three copies. The BBC copy was seized by an undercover agent working at the Romanian section who sent it back through the good offices of our embassy in London. With the second one there was quite a story. Although I had urged Parmley first to type my handwritten text and then destroy it, he made photocopies of the letter and distributed them to the British and other Western embassies. It was not difficult for the mole to obtain a copy for his Securitate contact. Actually, Parmley's decision to make photocopies was my decisive argument in rejecting the charge that he was my CIA contact: a professional would never have made such a gross mistake. The fact is that the mole was supplying the Securitate with photocopies of all the political reports Parmley teletyped to the State Department in Washington. Later, I found out that the mole had been recruited through the charms of an attractive Romanian brunette and that his contact was the courier of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who went to the U.S. embassy every day. It was a perfect arrangement that could spark the envy of any writer of thriller stories. Aside from those professional facets, Securitate was an abominable and monstrous institution. Its huge apparatus not only was an effective instrument of terror-it frightened, tortured, and even killed hundreds of people whose names are not even known-but a specialized division spread rumors and disinformation using the most modern techniques of psychological warfare, as directed by a tyrant against his own people. Securitate's hold on the nation was so tentacular and omnipresent that it appeared as a sort of Frankenstein exerting considerable power in keeping everyone cowed and frightened. For a long time, Securitate made the Romanians a nation of sheep. Securitate was particularly brutal when dealing with workers' strikes and demonstrations. After the 1977 coal miners' strike in the Jiu Valley and after the Bra~ov workers' riots in November 1987, Securitate not only put down the crowds savagely with riot troops but forcibly moved miners and workers en masse to other areas and dispatched their leaders to faraway places. The whole structure and composition of the work force became different, and visitors who knew the country from earlier years found themselves in an altered social environment. Securitate was also Ceau~escu's faithful watchdog. Paradoxically, it was the only institution in Romania that was allowed-indeed, encouraged-to inform the dictator about the real situation in the country: the real mood of the people and the real image of Romania abroad.

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Even some of the hostile comments broadcast by Radio Free Europe were reported in a daily release that bore TOP SECRET and ONE COPY ONLY on the cover. Particularly after the Jiu Valley strikes, Ceau~escu realized that it was essential for him to have a true picture of the state of the nation. While in 1989 he boasted of a 60-million-ton grain harvest, he knew very well that the warehouses held only 17 million. He was probably one of the biggest liars in history. Not many people got hold of their Securitate dossiers after the revolution, but I did. This is a story in itself. On 12January 1990, a number of Securitate officers brought out the archives, formed a huge pile in the inner courtyard, and set them on fire. But when the flames shot high, a general at the window became alarmed and ordered them to put out the fire, load the archives on a lorry, and drive them to the Scaieni pulp factory to melt them. They arrived late in the evening and unloaded the heap of paper in a warehouse to melt them the next day. At midnight, a worker forced his way into the warehouse (he was a burglar anyway) and with a flashlight fixed his eyes on a dossier with the name Silviu Brucan on it. Then moved his flashlight around and collected all dossiers (six) with that name on them. The next morning he drove his car to Bucharest and told the officer at the front door of the government building he wanted to see me and why. For once I was lucky. These documents are fantastic. They are so complete and detailed that they recall many happenings of my past life I had long forgotten about. By far the most important is the 100-page dossier (in form and size resembling a bound film script) that deals with the 1989 arrest and investigation. From the very outset, I must say that the description of my interrogation and the content of my answers and statements are related fairly correctly. There are of course such adjectives as "hostile," "inimical," and "treacherous" accompanying my statements critical of Ceau~escu and his policies, but the essence of my position is always stated accurately. This is why I gave the 100-page dossier to the weekly magazine Express to publish it in full in a serial that made quite a splash in Romania. This was the first complete Securitate original document made available to Romanian readership that revealed both the methods and ends of that monstrous institution. I admit that the strategy of the investigation was professionally elaborated; the investigators were very good at that. In the first month, the interrogation focused on my relations and talks with American diplomats and State Department officials (and they amassed plenty of evidence on that score), the unusually numerous visits to America (more than thirty over time), and the many American friends, politi-

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cians, professors, and academics who protested whenever I could not get my passport or was harassed and persecuted by Romanian authorities (including for the four books I published in the United States)-all of this to prove that I was an American agent recruited by the CIA and had been ever since I was ambassador to Washington. The case of my standing in America was indeed unique by Romanian standards. They even found a statement protesting my harassment in 1987 signed by George Bush, then vice-president of the United States. On that basis, they tried in the second month to force me to admit that I had been wrong to participate in the Letter of Six to Ceau~escu-to deny the letter publicly and recant with the promise I would be forgiven, freed, and perhaps even granted some favors if I behaved. During that second month, they subjected me to the whole array of threats and moral pressures that were Securitate's specialty: threat of an imminent, swift trial and sentence to death as an American agent, public humiliation before stage workers' meetings, eviction from my house to the isolated town of Zimnicea on the Danube (where the mosquitoes eat one up!), the breakup of my family (my daughter jobless and forced to accompany her husband to Calara~i), confiscation of my savings and royalties in dollars, and so on. They really thought of everything! Elena Ceau~escu was very good at that, and one of my investigators told me she got directly involved in organizing my ordeal. The climax was what Lt. Col. Radulescu called my "decisive test." He prepared the moment very carefully with the art of a psychiatrist. One Thursday evening, he warned me that Sunday afternoon I would be confronted with a "shock" and he thus feared I would have a heart attack-a fatal shock, he emphasized. He then repeated the warning Friday evening, adding that all my friends abroad had forgotten me and the Western press and even Radio Free Europe no longer mentioned my name. On Saturday evening, he added that my comrades, all five, had dissociated themselves from my criminal activities. Finally, Sunday afternoon, I was escorted to the "Philips Room," which was full of electronic equipment. Radulescu told me "Now listen carefully" and turned on a tape recorder. I heard a voice loudly reading a text and immediately recognized the voice of Gheorghe Apostol-indeed that was a shock. He was accusing me of being a "traitor of the fatherland"-that I had sold out to American imperialists and had written the Letter of Six at the order of the CIA, and that therefore I should be tried and sentenced for treason. He specifically mentioned the articles of the penal code that applied to my case-a clear indication he was reading a text prepared by Securitate.

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In my dossier, my reaction during the scene in the Philips Room is described laconically: He listened with the greatest attention to the recording, showing visible signs of extreme nervousness when such words were pronounced as "traitor" and "sold out to American imperialists." He finally concluded not having any doubt with regard to the authenticity of the tape. He mentioned, however, that only now does he realize that Gheorghe Apostol is a weak man, without personality, ready to betray his comrades in arms. He is now finished as a politician, he added .... Silviu Brucan has also found it necessary to point out that he will not change his position even if all signatories of the Letter Six demand this in a chorus.

The last remark of my chief investigator was most unexpected because it had a human touch: "Professor Brucan, after all these days, I respect you." I did not find this statement in the dossier marked "one copy only" for Ceau~escu.

The Real American Spy One of the recurring themes my investigators kept throwing at me was "Look, Mircea Raceanu admitted he is an American agent, but you don't. Why?" That is an interesting story. Raceanu had served in the 1970s as counselor at the Romanian embassy in Washington and afterward held the important position of deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry's department for North and South America. The New York Times called him a "superb diplomat"-and so he was, although before my arrest I had not grasped the underlying reasons for that high appreciation. I knew him well and would say we were good friends. In many instances he was very helpful and kept me informed about various demarches of the State Department (Secretary Alexander Haig in 1983 and Secretary George Shultz later) and other American institutions and personalities whenever I had difficulties in getting my passport to travel to America. We had met in the 1980s rather often at various social events at the American embassy. On 31January1989, in the evening, he was arrested while he was driving with his wife, Mioara, to a reception at the residence of the U.S. ambassador. His arrest was carried out by surprise by the Securitate. Two police cars barred his way, and a third one pulled alongside him. Two plainclothes men pushed Mircea and Mioara into their car, and another two started searching every part of his car. Apparently they had been tipped that he was carrying something like a secret file. Then

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they were both taken to Calea Rahoavei, where Mioara was thoroughly searched. The moment I found out about Mircea's arrest, I airmailed a report to my Vienna contact for the Associated Press. I wanted to test the channel to see how it worked. To my chagrin, nothing came out of it, and I told Michael Parmley about it. But he consoled me: "Don't worry, your report did reach AP, but they checked the information with me and I advised them not to release it." This made me suspicious, and when I was asked to hand over to Mioara Raceanu an envelope with 50,000 lei, I realized there was something fishy about the whole affair. So when the investigators kept tormenting me with Raceanu's case, I told them I wouldn't believe he was a spy unless they showed me the evidence. They did. In handwritten statements and recorded tapes, Mircea Raceanu recognized he had been recruited in 1974 by a CIA man called Bruce Primmer while serving at the Washington embassy. In 1975 Primmer passed him to another CIA officer, Tom Harvey, with whom he maintained contact until 1978. The arrangement was handy-$2,000 deposited monthly in his name at an American bank and 5,000 lei in Bucharest. Recalled home to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Raceanu established contact with Tom Witecki at the American embassy in Bucharest. Whenever Raceanu flew to Washington on official business, he met Tom Harvey. The evidence was overwhelming, and Raceanu had to plead guilty at his two-day trial in July, during which half a dozen witnesses testified before a panel of military judges in uniform. He was sentenced to death. My own assessment was that Ceau~escu would not have proceeded with the arrest and trial of a high official so well known in the United States had there not been solid evidence of his activities. Interventions from Washington in favor of Raceanu only confirmed his guilt. In the vanguard came Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a wealthy New Yorker; as president of the influential organization Appeal of Conscience, he enjoyed direct access to Ceau~escu. The rabbi argued that the meetings of workers asking for the death sentence for Raceanu were detrimental to Romanian-U.S. relations and could have dire consequences. However, the rabbi failed to explain why he was intervening in the case of a Gentile. Once the death sentence was pronounced, the U.S. charge d'affaires, Henri Clark, presented to the minister for foreign affairs a telegraphic note addressed to Ceau~escu from the White House. It read: "I ask you not to execute Mr. Mircea Raceanu's death sentence." It was signed "George Bush, President of the U.S." Missing was "or else," for it sounded like an ultimatum and Ceau~escu took it seriously. He did not proceed with the execution.

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Therefore, I found rather indecent Mircea Raceanu's claim that he was a dissident persecuted by Ceau~escu because his father signed the Letter of Six. For one thing, the timing did not fit the story. He had been apprehended on 31January1989, long before the letter was finalized and made public. Actually, it was Ceau~escu's perfidious tactic to link the letter to the spy case so as to discredit our political act. Thus, he alleged in interviews that the signatories of the letter were agents of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Therefore, I kept telling foreign correspondents that Raceanu's case had nothing to do with the Letter of Six. However, there were so many burglars, thieves, and embezzlers released from prison during the January 1990 amnesty who posed as dissidents and revolutionaries that it was not surprising that a spy also tried his luck. The trouble was that serious journalists and writers took their claims at face value and published their stories and pictures on front pages. In the case of Mircea Raceanu I decided to do something about it. We were in a fix: On the one hand, we did not want to embarrass Washington; on the other, we could not bring Raceanu back into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I arranged a meeting with the political counselor at the American embassy, Mr. Naper, because he seemed the right man to handle the case. Indeed, he easily understood the predicament and accepted my suggestion that the best solution would be a discreet arrangement whereby Raceanu and his family would go to the United States. Two weeks later, the mission, was accomplished. By now, Raceanu's savings in his American bank, interest added, should be sufficient to secure a decent life in the United States for the whole family.

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The Inside Story of the Revolution

Timi,oara: The Spark That Lit the Blaze It all started in Timi~oara in mid-December 1989. Eastern Europe was in a turmoil. The year had been startling: In June, Solidarity won the elections in Poland, then even the old reformist Janos Kadar in Hungary fell from power. Vaclav Havel took over as president in Czechoslovakia, and Todor Zhivkov was replaced in Bulgaria. Seldom in history has a whole geographic region changed so dramatically in so short a time! In December the spell of a downfall was approaching us, and Romanians were anxiously listening to foreign broadcasts. Something must happen here too-that was in their minds. And when the news about the riots in Timi~oara broke out, everybody thought alike: It was coming. How exactly the trouble started nobody knows. Popular rebellions or explosions never have a starting point. Apparently, the rumor that the militia was going to evict the popular local minister Laszlo Tokes from his house attracted a small crowd of the faithful ready to prevent his "deportation." Rumors traveled rapidly then in Romania, so that on 16 December a large crowd, including women and children, gathered in front of Tokes's house. That same night they marched through the center of the city shouting at first pro-Tokes slogans, but very soon one could hear "Down with Ceau~escu." Although the radicals who took control of the city a month later claimed that the other slogans were all anticommunist, some witnesses reported hearing "Long live Gorbachev" and "Perestroika, 11 which seems more likely for that time. General loan Coman, Ceau~escu's man in charge of the repression, made the point at his trial: "How could the demonstration be anticommunist when 60,000 party members participated in it?" In167

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deed, in 1989 the illusion that communism could be reformed if one simply pasted a human face on it was still going strong. Unlike in Bra~ov in 1987, the repressive forces were quick to respond. Initially, militia forces and firemen with hoses closed in on the demonstrators, but the crowd was in an uproar and getting ever larger. Workers from the industrial plants marched on the town hall, which was the headquarters of the local party committee, forced their way into the building, and repeated the Bra~ov performance: Files were trashed, portraits of Ceau~escu were thrown out of the window, and a huge fire was set in the street below. This time regular army troops and Securitate forces with tanks and armored cars opened fire and ran down men and women, children and old people. A traumatic act that will linger many months and years in the memory of Timi~oara was the scene of the military collecting the corpses and spiriting them away without any trace whatever. "Give us our dead" remains to this day a desperate and furious slogan shouted by the families and friends of the missing ones. News of th,e bloody repression in Timi~oara on the night of 16 December spread all over Romania and abroad. Riots broke out that same night in Arad, Sibiu, and Cluj. However, Ceau~escu stubbornly stuck to his plan to visit Iran the following day. But right before his departure, late on the night of 17 December, he summoned a special meeting of the Political Executive Committee that will go down in history as testimony to the insane and callous behavior of a leader ready to wage a war against his own people. The proceedings were tape recorded, thus constituting the incontestable evidence that the order to shoot into the crowds was Ceau~escu's and that nobody around that table dared to oppose it. There was a competition at that meeting between the two Ceau~escu tyrants-each tried to outdo the other in cynicism. Criticizing the holy trinity of repression (General Vasile Milea, defense minister, Tudor Postelnicu, interior minister, and General Iulian Vlad, chief of Securitate) for not following his orders to fire on the demonstrators, Ceau~escu said angrily: "I didn't think you would shoot with blanks; that is like a rain shower. Those who entered the party building should not leave the building alive." And he added: "They've got to kill the hooligans not just beat them .... You don't put down an enemy with Sunday sermons but by burning him." Elena was equally merciless: "You should shoot them and throw them in the basement. Not even one should see the daylight again!" Initially, Milea, Postelnicu, and Vlad tried to reason with Ceau~escu, but they became submissive when he cried: "As supreme commander, I consider that you have committed treason against the country's na-

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tional interests, against the people's interests, and against the interests of socialism. Do you know what I am going to do with you?" he concluded. "Send you to the firing squad." Typical for his political instinct that never left him (the "method in his madness") was the way he eyed each one around the table, carefully noting their reactions and faces, probing their determination and faithfulness with provocative questions. But they knew him well and were aware of his tricks. So they all abjectly agreed with him that the three had acted leniently. They were soft on anticommunism. When in succession Postelnicu, Milea, and Vlad engaged in the communist ritual of self-criticism and made a pledge to act decisively in the future, Ceau~escu in a grudgingly calculated voice said: "All right, shall we try once more, comrades?" As usual, the approval was unanimous. For political analysts, that historical meeting is a bonanza. Aside from the main revelation-the harsh repression and mass killing ordered by Ceau~escu and approved by the supreme organ of the partytwo points characteristic of communist political manipulation deserve examination: The first is the way Ceau~escu seized the Tokes case to argue that it was merely a pretext for the riots when in fact, behind the whole affair was "involvement of foreign circles and spy agencies, starting with Budapest." Stalin's Jews, as ideal scapegoats, were simply replaced by Ceau~escu's "Hungarian irredentists. 11 The second aspect is the way the international environment always looks for an "enemy" as the necessary political framework for the rationalization of repression: "Both in the East [i.e., Moscow] and in the West," Ceau~escu said in his opening statement, "everyone is saying that things ought to change in Romania ... and they are using any means at their disposal. ... At this moment in Europe, there is a situation of capitulation, of signing pacts with imperialism in order to wipe out socialism." Only he, Nicolae Ceau~escu, was standing up as the savior of socialism, the savior of Romania. That was his final image he wanted to convey to the nation.

Revolution on Television On 22 December I was in the rural-type shack in the Damaroaia suburb of Bucharest, where I had been evicted with my family. In the early morning I went to the Pajura market to buy potatoes and onions, accompanied, of course, by two plainclothesmen of Securitate. One of them had been smelling something in the air. As though he also wanted to buy some potatoes, he came closer to me and whispered so that the other did not hear: "Comrade Silviu [to sound more friendly], I hope you have noticed I always tried to be helpful. Whenever they

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brought beer to the Alimentara [grocery store], I advised you through the militia officer guarding your house to come with the bottles for exchange and I even kept a place for you on the line. You know that without me you would never have succeeded in buying beer, for the gypsies across the street were fetching thirty or forty bottles." Winking his eye he added: "I do hope you will remember me if things change." I became interested and asked: "What do you mean by change?" Said he: "Haven't you heard what happened last night at the Intercontinental? The ramshackle is tumbling down, Comrade Silviu, that's what transpired this morning at the report." (Early that morning, before going on business, the two had reported to headquarters to get fresh instructions.) Sometime before noon, the two militia officers guarding my house disappeared without our noticing it. But the neighbors invaded the courtyard shouting "Ceau~escu ran away" and started knocking at the door and the windows. I went outside and we hugged each other; the joy was immense. They wanted to lift me up, as they do with players at a football match. At that moment an old friend, Eduard Stan, who lives near the television studio, came with his car to fetch me. He told me that was where the action was, and we drove at top speed to the studio. A compact mass of people was surrounding the television tower. There was a fantastic uproar-the agitation and enthusiasm were indescribable. The people were shouting slogans and chanting "Ole, ole, ole, Ceau~escu nu mai e" (Ceau~escu is no more). Thunderous applause followed, a hurricane of cheers. At first we could not advance through the dense crowd, but when my friend shouted my name, a passageway immediately opened up before us. At that I experienced such strong emotion that I broke into tears; for the first time in my life people were showing their sympathy for my political stance. That also told me that I have a mandate to carry on. An officer at the entrance showed me to the elevator and escorted me to the eleventh floor, the cabinet of the television president. There I met Ion Iliescu, Petre Roman, General Nicolae Militaru, and others. A moment full of emotions. I had known Iliescu a long time; more recently (1988), he had stopped his car to give me a lift, but I crossed to the other sidewalk, signaling that I was shadowed. But over the years we had been in contact through Sergiu Celac, who used to work at a publishing house on the same floor with Iliescu's Editura Tehnica. Roman I had met as a student in the house of Valter Roman, his father. I knew General Militaru's dissident activities from General lonita, but conspiracy rules had prevented us from seeing each other. Then I met again old friends from my days as vice-president in charge of television (1962-1966). They took me quickly to Studio 4

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where I met the talented actor Ion Caramitru and the famous poet Mircea Dinescu, who introduced me to the audience (part of the crowd had entered the building). I made a very short statement emphasizing the difficulty of making the transition from dictatorship to democracy-of avoiding the disorder and anarchy that are almost inevitable in the process. The second point I made regarded the need to form a government that could secure the direction and administration of the country until the first free elections in Romania. Finally, I said it was essential to formulate a provisional program that focused on the vital problems too long neglected by Ceau~escu, and I listed three priorities: food supply, heat for apartments, and electricity to light people's homes. I said that was all for the time being-and concluded my twominute speech. (I was told my statement was too sober for the occasion and sounded a dissonant note amid the enthusiasm and triumphal mood of the others. I couldn't help it. Later, when I said in an interview with Le Figaro that it would take Romanians twenty years to learn democracy after a half century of dictatorship, everybody jumped on me and labeled my statement "antipatriotic," "inimical to democracy," and the like. A year later, the leaders of the opposition were noting that twenty years was perhaps too conservative of an estimate.) Anyway, in the meantime, Iliescu, Roman, and others went to the Ministry of Defense where they first made sure General Hie Ceau~escu, still giving orders in his office, was put under arrest and then took the first measures for keeping order in Bucharest and the rest of the country. I remained at the television studio, working with the director Petre Constantin to introduce discipline and order into the functioning and programming because there was a formidable assault by all those who were forcing their way into Studio 4 to appear and talk on the small screen. The whole nation was fixated on television: That was a unique opportunity, and people were prepared to do anything to seize it. Indeed, television was the decisive factor of the revolution. Every important act, from the popular uprising in the Palace Square to the trial and execution of the Ceau~escus, was seen live. The most impassioned calls to rise and join the revolution resounded on the small screen, and people responded in millions and came to the defense of the revolution.

The National Salvation Front At 5 p.m. an important meeting was convened at the Central Committee building; I was there on time. Much has been made of that meeting there in a room on the first floor; as I recall, the following were present:

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Iliescu, Roman, Barladeanu, General Militaru, and the two generals who assumed the command of all military activities: ~tefan Gu~e, chief of staff of the armed forces just returned from Timi~oara, and General Iulian Vlad, chief of Securitate. Actually, nothing important was decided in that meeting simply because many former Ceau~escu dignitaries were present, trying to get into the new government, something I opposed firmly from the very beginning. The only fact worth mentioning came out of the videotape of that meeting showed by French television Anthene 2, in which General Militaru suggested that the new government be called The National Salvation Front since "it has been in existence for six months." Actually, General Militaru was referring to a letter signed with that name and addressed to the twelfth congress of the Communist Party that had been broadcast by Radio Free Europe in June 1989. The letter had been written by a professor at the university in Bucharest, Alexandru Melian, who had never met or known personally either Iliescu or Militaru. Roman, never involved in political activities, was out of the question, and I was under strict surveillance in my Damaroaia shack. From that mouse, as a Romanian saying has it, the French press made up an elephant. This is how the story of the coup d'etat was born, and I reacted at a conference on 4January 1990: "I am amazed that serious papers in the West could swallow a story so grossly fabricated. I never thought Western media are so vulnerable." And another point: "If there was a plot that toppled Ceau~escu, we would have boasted about it and taken credit for such a feat before the Romanian people. Modesty is not the forte of politicians" (Liberation, 5 January 1990). But back to the 22 December events: In the evening, we all went back to the television studio. The shootout had already started around the Central Committee building, and now the studio was the main target. After the confusion and disarray of the afternoon generated by the unexpected flight of the Ceau~escus, the sharpshooters of the elite Securitate units, organized and trained for an urban guerrilla-type war in case of a popular revolt, started shooting from the buildings surrounding the party headquarters and television station. It soon became obvious that those elite units had established not only the main strategic objectives but also the surrounding houses that had to be occupied and used as shooting grounds. (The whole thing originated in secret order number 2600, inspired by Ceau~escu and signed by the interior minister, Tudor Postelnicu, which is discussed further later.) As a rule, the sharpshooters operated only after dark; their machine guns had infrared devices. From some vantage points on the eleventh floor I could see the buildings they were hiding in and the totally inad-

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equate response of the army units defending the television station; they were shooting from tanks and armored cars with an apparent lack of precision. I saw the mobility of the terrorists, who moved rapidly from the house already marked by the soldiers to nearby houses, immediately firing from the new place. Obviously, they knew perfectly well the locus of the presidential cabinet because they focused their fire there; hundreds of bullets struck the upper part of the back wall. We were thus compelled to move on our bent knees to stay below window level, and most of the time I had to read and write on the carpet. On the way to Studio 4 was a corridor with glass walls where we also had to move on our knees; the temperature there reached freezing after most of the glass was smashed by bullets. That night there were many instances of panic in the studio because a few terrorists hid inside the building to make trouble. Among the newcomers that evening I knew Dumitru Mazilu; I had met him years earlier at various scientific conferences where he always defended the official viewpoint, seldom clashing with my papers. I was aware, however, that in recent years he had written a critical study on violation of human rights in Romania and succeed in smuggling it to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Obviously, he was harassed and put under house arrest by Securitate thereafter. I also met for the first time a brave man, Gelu Voican-Voidulescu, and Captain Mihai Lupoi, a daring but impulsive man who drove me in his car to the meeting in the party building and back. There were also a lot of young revolutionaries full of energy and enthusiasm-Cazimir Ionescu, Vasile Neaqa, Gheorghe Manole, Bogdan Teodoriu, and many others-and they made a lively and noisy group. Because I was busy with television affairs-wrestling without great success with the pandemonium pervading the mass of people squeezed into the building-I did not directly participate either in drawing the initial list of the council of the National Salvation Front (NSF) or in formulating the text of the communique to the Nation, the first NSF manifesto, which was prepared in a nearby office tree of bullets. However, I did participate beforehand in a discussion with Iliescu, Dan Martian, and others in which we agreed on the main points of the document. Since quite a controversy broke out around the manifesto and Dumitru Mazilu declared in press interviews that I "censored" the text before it was broadcast, I am setting forth here the changes I made so that my contribution is clear. First, since the text had no introduction, I wrote: "We live a historic moment. The Ceau~escu clan, which brought down the country to disaster, has been eliminated from power. A new page in Romanian polit-

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ical and economic life has opened up." Then I replaced "National Civic Forum" with "National Salvation Front." On point five regarding agriculture, I added "support for small production and a halt to the destruction of villages." On point eight, I replaced wording that seemed to me technical with this sentence: "To that end, we shall stop the export of food products, we shall cut the export of oil products, giving priority to meeting the needs of people in heating and light." On point nine regarding foreign policy, I added: "We shall integrate in the process of forging a united Europe, common house of all European states, and we shall observe the international commitments of Romania, first of all those regarding the Warsaw Treaty." Finally, I deleted "So help us God" because we were addressing the whole population of the country, not only Christians. After the communique was written, we had a discussion about who should read it. I suggested Iliescu, and it was so decided. He also read the initial list of members of the NSF Council. Afterward, we had to establish the Executive Bureau and its members. About Iliescu, as chairman, there was unanimity. I then stated that I wanted no position whatever either in the state leadership or in the government. Some reservations were expressed about Dumitru Mazilu, but finally he was accepted as first deputy chairman. This is how the supreme organ of power was organized:

Coundl of National Salvation Front Executive Bureau Chairman - Ion Iliescu First deputy chairman - Dumitru Mazilu Deputy chairmen - Cazimir Ionescu and Carol Kiraly Secretary - Dan Martian Members - Bogdan Teodoriu, Vasile Neaqa, Silviu Brucan, Gheorghe Manole, Ion Caramitru, and Nicolae Radu Working Committees Constitutional, legal, and human rights - Dumitru Mazilu Foreign Affairs - Silviu Brucan Economic reconstruction - Bogdan Teodoriu Education and science - Gheorghe Manole National minorities - Carol Kiraly Administrative organizations - Nicolae Radu Youth - Vasile Neaqa Environment - Cazimir Ionescu Culture - Ion Caramitru Organizational affairs - Mihai Montanu Public relations and media - Dan Radulescu

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Young revolutionaries meet with the author during the December 1989 upheaval.

Ion lliescu appears on television near midnight 22 December 1989 to read the National Salvation Front's first communique to the nation . On his right are Petre Roman, Dumitru Mazilu, and the author.

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Out of eleven members, four belonged to the young generation and three were in their forties. Four were older, having held important positions in the Communist Party in a distant past but known to have opposed Ceau~escu's policies in one way or another.

The Urban Guerrilla Warfare The next morning, 23 December, we all moved to the Ministry of Defense. The first order of business was the formation of a government. This task precipitated the first clash between Iliescu and me, in retrospect the beginning of a growing conflict-a conflict that had nothing personal in it (we liked and admired each other) but a lot of conceptual differences about politics. Ion Iliescu had always been considered by all of us as the best man to replace to Ceau~escu as leader of the Communist Party. Intelligent and cultivated, with a modern outlook on contemporary society, open to all the novelties brought about by the scientific-technological revolution, he seemed a fairly balanced man for a position of power. We were perfectly aware of his limitations that made him act politically only within the system, playing strictly by party rules. However, the December revolution took on an anticommunist character, because people identified Ceau~escu with the party. And here, all of us, educated and mentally shaped by the party, had to adjust rapidly to the new situation. It was a difficult and painful adjustment, particularly for those, like Iliescu, who had been party activists, subjected daily to communist rituals and behavior. For thirty years he had been ground in the party machinery and.molded accordingly. Iliescu thus felt an almost irresistible attraction for his party cronies. His first choice as prime minister was Hie Verdet, Ceau~escu's premier in the 1970s who was aggressively maneuvering in the Central Committee building on 22 December. I realized the danger of such a choice and countered with the proposal to nominate Petre Roman as prime minister. He was indeed very young and inexperienced for the job, I argued, but that was precisely an important asset of his, provided he could learn fast. Second, he did not carry the political ballast of a communist past. And third, because he had been one of the first to enter the building of the Central Committee and had proclaimed from the balcony the end of the Ceau~escu era and the beginning of a popular regime, Roman was a representative figure of the revolution. Then the decision made by Iliescu the day before to nominate General Victor Stanculescu as defense minister had to be reversed. I said I trusted Stanculescu's decision to join the revolution, but all those informed knew that he had been very close to the tyrants and it seemed

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The Romanian leadership, New Year's Day, 1990. From left: General Nicolae Militaru (defense minister), Dumitru Mazilu (NSF first deputy chairman), Ion lliescu (NSF chairman, elected president in May 1990), Petre Roman (prime minister), and Silviu Brucan (NSF Executive Bureau) .

odd for the general appointed by Ceau~escu in the morning as defense minister to be appointed by Iliescu in the evening for the same job. A general known to have opposed the dictator, Nicolae Militaru, was instead our choice as defense minister. We made only one exception about not retaining Ceau~escu's cadres and kept in power Paul Niculescu-Mizil, a member of the Political Executive Committee. He knew well the food deposits of the party and of

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the Securitate, and he had the whole network of food distribution in his hands. Indeed, the stores were filled overnight with food items Romanians had not seen in years-meat, cheese, salami, and even such rare delicacies as oranges, bananas, coffee, chocolate-which had previously been the perks of the nomenklatura. They were all made available to the starving consumers. We also turned on the heat and hot water in freezing apartments. The NSF thus gained immense popularity. Romanians got at last a government that cared about their basic needs, in stark contrast to the callous attitude of the Ceau~escus who could not care less about their well-being. During the euphoric first days, the NSF also released political prisoners and decreed a broad amnesty, lifted a ban on abortion, and canceled the high prices of gas and electricity imposed by the tyrants. Although some of these measures were populistic and even demagogic, the package as a whole reinforced wide public support of the NSF. In the meantime, the city was up in arms. The terrorist groups were on the offensive everywhere. An eyewitness in the hall of a central building gave a telling picture: At that moment a burst of gunfire rings outside and the crowd in the hall disperses in panic. I run out. Trams zoom past. People dash for doorways. Tires screech and drivers run for cover. Glass shatters as bullets hit windows. Where are the shots coming from? The enemy is invisible. Soldiers from a nearby barracks run across the road and hide behind trees, lampposts, and rubbish bins. Forward, from one doorway to another. A few hundred meters ahead-a square empty with an abandoned van. A bullet hole in the wind screen, keys in the ignition, the radio playing Christmas carols. No sign of the driver-probably escaped in time. A trolley-bus wire, cut by a bullet, drops to the street. An APC, its armored plates down, a tricolor flag unfurled, drives forward streaking black clouds of exhaust fumes. "Come, come"-a few armed civilians hiding in a doorway motion me into a large house-"we'll show you." They take me upstairs to a large dark office, plush in the Stalinist taste. A soldier takes aim with a Dragunov sniper rifle. He pulls the trigger and my ears almost burst. Did he score? I edge forward and look over the rim of the window. A hundred yards in front of us runs a railway on a ridge, and beyond it, behind a concrete wall, spreads an industrial expanse of silos, factory halls, railway branches, and heavy machines. Securitate snipers are invisible. All our bullets must be missing.

The Night of the Generals Now, just imagine that against that background the military operations against the terrorists were in the hands of two generals: ~tefan

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who had been sent by Ceau~escu to quell the rebellion in Timiand Julian Vlad, the chief of Securitate. I experienced quite a shock the moment I found out about this in the Defense Ministry. I was told that General Vlad had joined the revolution and was cooperating fully with General Gu~e, which did not surprise me: Both had been members of the Central Committee and enjoyed Ceau~escu's trust. But to put the fate of the revolution in the hands of the two was something I could not bear. After all, I had known General Vlad during my two months' stay and investigation at Securitate. He was by far the most intelligent and most cunning general, one head above all others. So I decided to test his loyalty by asking him to make a public statement giving an explicit order to his troops and snipers to cease fire and surrender. Although he made a public statement, he failed go give that specific order, and I asked for a meeting of the war council in which to have a direct confrontation with General Vlad. I encountered some resistance among my NSF fellows; Iliescu seemed reluctant to rock the boat. I felt that this was an issue so crucial that I had to put it in yes-orno terms. So I told Iliescu that if my demand for a confrontation was not met, I would take my hat and quit: "I could not possibly cooperate with the chief of Securitate. If you can, it's your privilege." So the meeting was called to order for Sunday, 24 December, at 7 p.m. I realized that this was an immense challenge for me and prepared very carefully for it. The meeting started on time; present were seven or eight generals, Iliescu, and Roman. General Gu~e presented a report on the military situation. The terrorists were on the offensive, attacking new strategic objectives (including the Defense Ministry building-we could hear the fire outside), while the army, totally unprepared and inadequately equipped for a guerrilla-type war, could not control the situation. It was a rather bleak and alarming report. Then I proceeded with my first question: "General Vlad, why in your public statement was the specific order we asked you to give your troops and snipers missing? Why didn't you comply with our demand?" General Vlad, showing once more his slippery manner, argued calmly that his statement was a determined commitment in favor of the revolution, and he considered this to be much more important because it gave the correct political orientation to his troops. I stubbornly reiterated my question: "Why didn't you give them the specific order to cease fire and surrender? We told you that this had to be the key sentence of your statement, which was meant as a military not a political statement. Why did you dodge the issue?" Gu~e,

~oara,

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He got irritated, angry, and retorted that this was the first time someone had questioned his loyalty to the revolution even as he was giving all his energy to it. So I said to him: "Why are you surprised that I have doubts about your sincerity? Haven't we met before? Don't you remember the brutal and perfidious methods you used to scare me and make me repudiate the Letter of Six to Ceau~escu?" "I don't think that is relevant here; now we are engaged in a battle we must cooperate in to win, 11 the master of tactics retorted. I turned then to the second question: We have now plenty of evidence that a careful preparation of terrorist operatives of Securitate has long been carried out. This includes a list of strategic objectives to be attacked and obviously the buildings around them, the points for the operatives to meet and get into action, the ammunition depots where they can replenish, the means of communication between them and the centers where they get instructions, the means of transportation, both civilian and military-and above all the secret tunnels equipped with sophisticated phone and radio links, food, and ammunition depots, where the terrorists enter and get out all the time. General, it is impossible to conceive that such complex activities and means have not been put together and synchronized beforehandin what is called a contingency plan for the organization of a guerrillatype war in case of a plot or rebellion against the regime. So, general, here comes my question: The moment you decided to join the revolution, why didn't you reveal that plan to the army? Why didn't you tell the generals around this table where the meeting points of your operatives are, what are their means of communication and transportation? Why have you never mentioned the underground tunnels? Why did we have to discover those tunnels without your help?

Everybody around the table could then see General Vlad growing red. He filled his glass with water, took some pills, and finally said: "There is no such plan." Point. But I put the screws on him, so he added: "If there was such a plan, I did not know about it." I then turned to the generals and asked them: "Could you possibly imagine in your military organization that a commanding general would know nothing about a plan involving the troops and officers under his command?" They answered in chorus: "No, impossible!" That did it. The generals lost confidence in Vlad's loyalty-that was the purpose of the whole exercise. Realizing the predicament, General Vlad asked for a final test to prove his loyalty. He promised to organize an action next day that

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would result in the capture of a great number of terrorists. The generals agreed to give him that last chance; in fact that chance was extended for two or three days, but nothing came of it and finally General Vlad was arrested. The new defense minister, General Nicolae Militaru, changed the whole chain of command of the armed forces, and people could then truly say: "The army is with us!"

The Christmas Day Trial That same night, at the Defense Ministry, there was another fateful meeting with a grim agenda: trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceau§escu. The meeting lasted for three hours, and in retrospect I could say it was by far the most spirited session of the Executive Bureau. Political, juridical, and military considerations were thoroughly discussed. Surely, we would have liked to stage a major open trial seen live on television to expose the crimes, abuses, and disastrous consequences of Ceau§escu's policies and decisions. The basic faults of the communist system and its propensity for a dictatorial political regime could be well documented through such a trial, and its educational value could be enormous for Romanians. There was a vivid exchange of views on the juridical merits of such an open trial. We heard arguments about the Nuremberg trials but also counterarguments about the secret show trials staged by Stalin and Vyshinsky, not to mention the swift procedures of the French Revolution and the summary trials after World War II in many European countries of the so-called collaborators with the German occupation troops. Legality has never been the forte of revolutions. Nor is a fair trial the dream of a revolutionary. So, finally, military considerations prevailed. The fate of the revolution was at stake. In the evening, we got information that there had been considerable gunfire around the barracks where the Ceau§escus were detained, which signaled the presence of Securitate sharpshooter squads in the vicinity. Indeed the concern was that if they succeeded in freeing Nicolae Ceau§escu and he took command of the security forces and rallied around him generals that remained loyal to him, there would be a bloodbath in Romania with hundreds of thousands dead. That military argument carried the day. Nobody thought it was Christmas. General Victor Stanculescu was commissioned to organize the trial, for which he had already made some preparations. He organized the transportation to Tirgovi§te of the members of the military tribunal,

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prosecutors, and lawyers in two helicopters. Gelu Voican-Voiculescu and Ion Magureanu accompanied them to the trial as NSF observers. The trial lasted fifty-five minutes on Monday, 25 December. I saw the film in unedited form in the evening. The Ceau~escus were sitting in a corner facing the president and his assessors. The prosecutor, the clerk of the court, and the public lawyers were on their right, the observers on their left. But the film that was broadcast on television did not show that arrangement because they were all afraid of being killed by the terrorists still around. Indeed, Nicu Teodorescu, the senior defense lawyer, was wounded in the back later that night in Bucharest. The proceedings had all the features of a war trial. Actually, a war was still raging in Bucharest and in a number of towns where the terrorists were in full swing. Nicolae Ceau~escu, from the start, took a dignified posture, refusing to be drawn into any kind of debate. Although he rejected the court's right to try him, he nevertheless could not resist the impulse on several occasions to refute the charges against him. Typical in this regard was his reaction of the charge of "starving Romania." "Nonsense," he shouted. "Speaking as an ordinary citizen I can tell you that for the first time in their lives the workers have had two hundred kilos of flour a year and many additional benefits. All you allege are lies. As an ordinary citizen I can tell you that never in Romania's history has there been such progress." The whole trial reflected the urgency of the case. The prosecutor documented the charges briefly, the interrogation was telegraphic, and the defense lawyer spoke at maximum five minutes. The Ceau~escus were defiant until the death sentence was read. And as four men brought in from Bucharest walked up to the couple and started tying their wrists behind their backs, the two realized for the first time they were to die soon, and their morale suddenly broke down. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the episode was the readiness of all soldiers guarding the Ceau~escus to participate in their execution. Although the officer asked only five soldiers of the platoon to step forward and shoot, all soldiers fired when they heard the order. More than 100 bullets were found in the two bodies. The correctness of our decision was fully confirmed the next day after the film of the trial was shown on television. Most of the terrorists surrendered to army units, and street fighting ebbed considerably. An interesting case involved one sharpshooter who refused to talk on the ground that he had made the commitment to defend Ceau~escu so long as he was alive, and he had not seen on television that the dictator was dead-living testimony of the fanaticism inculcated by the regime in the Securitate apparatus. Therefore, the next evening the bul-

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let-pocked bodies of the two stretched out in an unkempt courtyard and a closeup of both lying dead were shown twice on television, and the man started talking. With the execution, all hopes pinned on a comeback of Ceau~escu were dashed.

Whodunit of Terrorists: Who Were They? The question of who the terrorists were sums up the most incredible and queer facet of the Romanian revolution. Even more bewildering is the fact that not even historians of the future will ever be able to clear it up. All traces have disappeared for all practical purposes, and not one single terrorist is available for questioning or trial. This beats even the now-classic story of President Kennedy's assassinatio.n with all suspects killed and all potential witnesses dead. Everybody knows the terrorists in Romania were shooting and killing people, but not a single one of them can now plead guilty or not guilty. They are simply missing as such, although as living persons they might function as respectable entrepreneurs or businessmen, superior officers or cabinet ministers. It all started with the secret order number 2600 signed in 1988 by Tudor Postelnicu, interior minister. That line of investigation has never been pursued, though the order was mentioned more than once during the trials sponsored by military tribunals. Postelnicu was sentenced to life in prison for "participation in genocide," a genocide that did not materialize, but he was never questioned on that particular order. While in prison, he was interviewed for four hours by two journalists; he talked about everything except the order, though he not only signed it, but also was responsible for its enforcement. In brief, order number 2600 is taboo. Historically, the order originated in the 1987 Bra~ov riots, when the authorities were taken by surprise and reacted very late. In response, Ceau~escu instructed Postelnicu to study the matter and make proposals to set up proper forces and to elaborate ways and means to quell such popular movements. In all thirty-eight pages, the document speaks of "antiterrorist" fighting units. Just change their name to "terrorist" units and that's it. Article 11 says: "In case public order has been seriously troubled, at the order of the local chief inspector of the Interior Ministry and on the basis of a unique plan of action, units of antiterrorist defense jointly with available units of Securitate-Intervention will participate in the restoration of public order." The document emphasizes that

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such unique plans of action must be elaborated in each judet and in Bucharest. The method is clearly spelled out in Article 29: "The intervention will be effectuated by surprise, with determination, using specific forms and procedures of action and specific means of equipment, and will be directed against those engaged in acts of disorder, forcing their way into institutions or attacking persons with the view of neutralizing the attackers." Finally, order number 2600 establishes the special elite units that were to be specially equipped and trained for such urban guerrilla-type warfare. It was a contingency plan in case of a revolt against the Ceau~escu regime, and this is exactly what happened on 22 December 1989 in Bucharest. In the last days of 1989 and in January 1990 when I was still in power as a member of the NSF Executive Bureau, I saw many reports coming from the army or the police about large groups of terrorists in custody (either through arrest, capture by civilian groups, or surrender). They numbered in the hundreds in Bucharest alone. Well, all of them have been released. I remember some of them were found with two identity cards and keys for two apartments. The initial investigation there discovered civilian and military clothes, ammunition, freezers full with food, and, of course, a fake passport. Nothing came out of that either. The forgiving revolution! The Unfinished Business of the Revolution In retrospect, the balance sheet of the breakthrough strategy in the ~three pillars of the dictatorship does not look exceedingly cheerful. In the Communist Party, the leadership remained loyal to Ceau~escu until the last moment, but the grassroots level was affected by tens of thousands of communists becoming active participants in the revolution. In the army, dissident activities fared somewhat better: In early 1989 the Military Committee of Resistance numbered more than twenty generals and quite a few officers in every garrison and was expanding into the air force and marines. Therefore, while it is true that in Timi~oara, Bucharest, Sibiu, Cluj, and other cities, the army under the command of loyalist generals did shoot into the crowds, on 22 December a turnabout took place in the ranks of officers and soldiers, most of them refusing to shoot and instead fraternizing with the revolutionaries. Once General Militaru took over as minister of defense, the whole chain of command shifted into the hands of generals devoted to the revolution, and only then did the slogan "The army is with us" acquire real significance. Anyone who thinks that such a radi-

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cal reversal in armed forces could happen spontaneously does not understand the workings of a military structure consolidated over more than two decades. We have seen what that means in Iraq, where the generals and officers groomed by dictator Saddam Hussein remained loyal even after the crushing defeat of their forces. In brief, dissident activities in the military structure have proved their political usefulness. With the third pillar of power, the Securitate, the problem appears much more complicated. The last-minute breakthrough in their ranks has had great advantages but dire consequences. Let me point out first that a clear distinction should be made among Securitate's components: (1) the regular troops of the Interior Ministry, about 25,000 soldiers strong; (2) the special elite units made up chiefly of snipers and fighters trained in urban guerrilla-type warfare; and (3) the repressive apparatus proper. The breakthrough strategy directed primarily to the commanding officers of the regular troops was quite successful: On 22 December these troops joined the revolution. Even the battalion that guarded the Central Committee building did so, allowing the revolutionaries to storm its premises. The special elite units came from (1) the Securitate military academy at Baneasa headed by General Nicolae Andruta Ceau~escu (about 2,000 officers); (2) the USLA (Special Units for Antiterrorist Fight) headed by Colonel Gheorghe Ardeleanu (about 800); (3) Direction 5 headed by General Neagoe, in charge of Ceau~escu's security (about 450); and (4) the Bucharest Securitate forces headed by Colonel Ion Goran (about 600). And, of course, there were small units in Timi~oara, Cluj, Bra~ov, la~i, and other cities. It is my considered view, based on information I got in late December through January, that the terrorists were officers and staff sergeants belonging to those special units and acting according to missions provided by order number 2600. The time has come to reveal that they were joined by about thirty Arab students and officers who had been trained at Andruta Ceau~escus military academy. One of them was killed and many were wounded, but the cadaver disappeared from the morgue, and the wounded, after undergoing surgery or being bandaged at the hospital, were taken away by their comrades and all left on a Libyan airplane that brought food and humanitarian aid to Bucharest. In sum, the balance sheet is ambivalent: On the one hand, the regular troops who could carry out a bloodbath were neutralized, integrated into the army; on the other hand, a fateful decision made by President Iliescu absorbed also within the army the special "antiterrorist" units and the repressive apparatus proper. Decree number 4

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of 26 December 1989 resolved that "the Department of State Security, the Command of the Security troops, together with the organs and units under their command are passing within the framework of the Ministry of the Armed Forces." Hence, both the special units that provided the terrorists and the most brutal and ferocious repressive organ of Ceau~escu were legally integrated within the new system. The issue was never discussed in the NSF Executive Bureau, where I would have certainly opposed it and know many other members would have as well. The other decree number 33 of 30 December 1989, which abolished the Department of State Security, was superfluous once the department was a component part of the army. The fateful decision of 26 December is at the origin of such major political failures: First, all terrorists were released by militia and army officers. Second, no serious investigation of the crimes and abuses committed by Securitate has been undertaken by the military prosecutors, and consequently, no trial of its leaders has ever taken place. To entrust the officers of Securitate to the officers of the army is like entrusting a womanizer friend to guard your wife. General Iulian Vlad, chief of Securitate, and a few of his associates were tried and sentenced to various prison terms on charges restricted to wrongdoings committed in only four days (17-21 December) before the day of the revolution. Their activities as Securitate leaders over the years of Ceau~escu's regime have never been on trial. Therefore, that institution, as such, has not been condemned by the new regime. In brief, Securitate has remained the unfinished business of the revolution. It is a historical fact that at the time of the revolution, the only political force in the country capable of providing leadership was the National Salvation Front. Quite naturally, in that phase, the leadership was made up of politicians known to have opposed the Ceau~escu dictatorship jointly with the brave young men and women who rose on the tanks and barricades of the revolution. During that revolutionary phase, nobody contested the legitimacy of the new power, or the program of the revolution the NSF presented to the nation the night of 22 December 1989. Once that decisive phase of the revolution had ended, the political parties of prewar Romania, which had been banished by the communist regime, were resurrected and started their activities in the opposition along with a hundred new political parties. The multiparty political system was emerging in full swing. In an interview with a morning paper (Romania Libera, 31 January 1990), I noted that the NSF could not be "player and referee at the same time" once it was engaged in the electoral campaign. That same

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day, the NSF Executive Bureau decided to invite the opposition parties to a discussion that eventually resulted in the formation of the Provisional Council for National Unity that would function as a parliament in adopting the electoral law and supervising its implementation until the elections of 20May1990. After I saw this critical problem solved, I attended the meeting of the NSF Executive Bureau on 4 February 1990 and presented my resignation: Today, 4 February, I decided to withdraw from the leadership of the National Salvation Front because I consider my mission accomplished. The National Salvation Front is to participate in the elections in order to carry through the reforms promised in the Manifesto of 22 December 1989. The Provisional Council of National Unity is so constituted as to ensure (a) the political and economic stability of the country, which is indispensable to the process of democratization, and (b) the objectivity of the elections. I trust that all my friends in the front will share my conviction that a strong opposition is essential in a true democracy. I am still worried because of three main weaknesses of the new political process: 1. The honest people stay at home; they do not engage in the struggle for democracy and do not speak up on the major issues confronting the nation, leaving the political arena to be dominated by personal ambitions, careerism, and political opportunism. 2. The electoral campaign has started. However, its focus is not on a confrontation of ideas, programs, options of economic policies or strategies for Romania's future, but on personal recrimination and character assassination, threatening to bring the political discourse to the lowest tradition of our prewar elections. 3. Ominous for the formation of our public opinion is the fact that the man who claims to be its mentor actually led for more than 15 years two principal propaganda organs that competed for first place in the promotion of Ceau~escu's personality cult, a man who was appointed by the dictator himself to be a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and a deputy in the Grand National Assembly, institutions in which enthusiastic applause was compulsory. Although this man did not feel obliged to account for those nefarious activities, he has been rather successful in manipulating students and intellectuals and in getting control over two important publications. Finally, I must state that whenever the Front will need my experience and knowledge, I shall be ready to serve. My intention, however, is to go back to my writing and research in social and political sciences. Silviu Brucan

The New York Times and other Western papers identified the man I alluded to in my third point: Octavian Paler.

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The Day After ...

Professor Silviu Brucan, the eminence grise behind Romania's ruling National Salvation Front, was asked by an earnest woman from American television how the people could trust a government which changed its mind every day. "Every day is an exaggeration," he replied with a grin. "We only change our minds every week." -Times (London), 23 January 1990 When I presented my resignation at the meeting of the NSF Executive Bureau, chairman Ion Iliescu immediately accepted it, saying that he perfectly understood my motives. He was happy to get rid of me. The others, however, rejected the idea, arguing that I could not quit before the elections, so critical for the NSF's political future. So I advanced a compromise solution-to stay as an ordinary member until the 20 May elections and go only afterward. Finally, that was accepted. They indeed had a point. After all, I was the only one who had stated in early January that the NSF must participate in the elections; at the time Iliescu and the others did not even think of it. They were living in a sort of political outer space talking about "national consensus" and other such idyllic formulas, not realizing that the failure of the NSF to field candidates would leave a political vacuum the opposition parties would be only too happy to fill. In fact, those groups had already started quarreling about the best choice for prime minister, and they of course reacted angrily to my statements. Iliescu then reproachec;l me for creating difficulties for the government, and only after some supporters of the NSF joined the Liberal Party (because they felt there was no future for them in the NSF) did he make a public statement announcing the participation of the NSF in the elections. 1 Spirited discussion ensued on the issue of electoral strategy. I realized that the population had gone through the traumatic experience of the revolution with its violence and tension, and therefore the dominant sentiment in May would be the people's desire for relaxation and 189

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stability in order to enjoy the new freedoms and rights after so many decades of repression and terror. Hence, the slogan "a president for our tranquility" seemed to me best suited for the mood of the electorate. The leaders of the opposition totally ignored that mood. They had missed the train of the revolution and were trying to regain lost ground by overdoing anticommunism through a street strategy that emphasized marches and demonstrations culminating in forceful attacks on government buildings and daring attempts to penetrate them by force. Actually, the opposition groups were trying to gain powerwhat they called the "second revolution." The best organized form of that strategy was the University Plaza, a stronghold of stone blocks and iron fences set up right in the center of Bucharest. It was a meeting place for thousands of people around the clock as a "zone free of communism." From the very beginning I considered this phenomenon a legitimate expression of the hostile feelings against the communist dictatorship that had ravaged the conscience of Romanians in the 1980s; now the mood could burst out and manifest itself without restrictions. University Plaza became also the agora in which resounded the cry of sorrow and the anguished sense of complicity besetting the Romanian intelligentsia for its culpability of various degrees-from close collaboration with the dictatorship, to beneficiary of material perks or professional promotion, to sheer passivity and conformist attitude embraced as a way of social adaptation. It may sound paradoxical, though not inexplicable psychologically, but the most aggressive and noisy militants of the 1990 moment were the collaborators of first degree who had turned anticommunist hard-liners overnight. I called them "retroactive dissidents," for now, when there was no risk whatever, they raised their voices and sharpened their pens against those in power. Well trained in political calculation, they invented a strategy equally subtle and ingenious. Since they had held important and wellknown positions in the "golden era"-writing poems or directing television programs dedicated to the Ceau~escus until the day of the revolution-they shifted the main direction of the attacks to the initial period of communism in Romania, the Gheorghiu-Dej era. The mastermind of the new strategy was Octavian Paler, Ceau~escu's appointee as head of television and later chief editor of Romania Libera-in fact, a pillar of the propaganda system for twenty years. Well, Paler chose as his favorite target me, the "old Stalinist ideologist" of the GheorghiuDej era. All of Paler's old comrades got the message and their leitmotif was the same: "The revolution was not against Ceau~escu but against communism, and therefore one must attack it from its very inception

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in Romania. That strategy suited the Securitate very well (if the idea was not its own product) because this way all of Ceau~escu's henchmen got off scot-free. This is why the whole network of Securitate informers and disinformers in the media joined forces with the "retroactive dissidents" in ensuring the success of the new strategy.

Twenty Years Until Democracy In an interview with the editor of Le Figaro (22January 1990), I stated that Romanians would need twenty years to learn practicing democracy after living for a half century under dictatorships. Paler immediately labeled my declaration "antipatriotic," and all his associates in the media jumped on me. One of them even sued me for "offending the dignity of the Romanian nation." However, after the 20 May elections, which resulted in a landslide victory for the National Salvation Front (66 percent of the popular vote) and President Iliescu (85 percent), there was a significant metamorphosis in the reaction to my statement: "Brucan was right," sounded the chorus, and the two leaders of the opposition so categorically defeated in the presidential elections came to me and said: "Perhaps your estimation was too conservative, and more than twenty years will be required." Quite a fuss has also been made of an interview of mine in The Independent. A correspondent of Hungarian origin attributed to me an expression that has remained in Romanian folklore: "stupid people." Actually, I was talking about the main theme of my latest book, namely that, as a result of the technological revolution, the weight of industrial workers in society is going down, both numerically and in social status and prestige, while intellectuals are acquiring a strategic position. In a simplistic and hurtful interpretation, the correspondent wrote: "Silviu Brucan has a dream. In the post-Communist society he hopes to build, there will be only two classes: clever people and stupid people." Romania Libera, formerly Ceau~escu's official paper, made a big story out of this on its front page, claiming in the title that I consider Romanians "stupid people." Thousands of leaflets with the same article were posted in the whole city, particularly at subway stations. In vain did I try to explain the next day that the correspondent had grossly distorted my ideas and that I had never used the expression "stupid people." Not even the denial published the next day in The Independent could help. Goebbels, the Nazi slander master, was right when he said: "Repeat, repeat, something will remain." However, when I was credited with the famous expression, I did not anticipate that so many in the press would feel offended. Sorry!

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The May 1990 Election and the NSF In May 1990, the social structure of communist society simplistically defined by Stalin's triptych (two classes, workers and peasants, plus a stratum, the intellectuals) was still in force. The industrial workers, dominating the urban centers, were pinning their hopes on the National Salvation Front that courted and pampered them with a five-day work week and higher wages, in sharp contrast with the decline of production and productivity. The peasants got 30 percent of the arable land as individual plots and the freedom to produce and sell their output without restrictions, a far cry from Ceau~escu's harsh policy enforced with the help of militia. With about 40 percent workers, 28-29 percent peasants, and less than 20 percent in services, Romania qualified as an underdeveloped nation in European terms, and the NSF became the political beneficiary of that status. Actually, the NSF inherited the social base of the Communist Party, which Ceau~escu had deceived and alienated. In June, I published an article ("Democracy in Romania Starts with Democracy in the Front") and gave a television interview in which I stated: "The result of the 20 May elections is such that the main responsibility for the continuation of democratization lies with the National Salvation Front, which is totally unprepared for playing such a role. To be capable of meeting the formidable task of building a democracy up to Western European standards, the Front must tum-from the heterogeneous organization issued from the revolution-into a political party with a clearly defined ideology, an internal structure, and leadership." On that occasion, I formulated my first public critique of President Iliescu, reproaching him for having surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants, neither of whom had the courage to tell him he had made a mistake or was about to make one. A head of state in this situation is deprived of his main line of defense against erroneous decisions. Recalling the classic warning "power corrupts," I concluded: "Let us guard against a repetition of this in Romania, my countrymen!" The NSF press reacted with vicious attacks against me, going so far as to repeat Ceau~escu's accusation of my being a spy in the service of CIA but adding the KGB and MOSSAD among my patrons-briefly, a triple spy. Quite a performance, without precedent as far as I know. Conversely, the main paper of the opposition, Dreptatea, published an article "Thank You, Mister Brucan" (5 June 1990), and Romania Libera titled its editorial "The Brucan Earthquake" (2 June 1990).

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In March 1991, after a delay of almost one year, the National Salvation Front did exactly what I had advocated: At the national convention the NSF became a political party, declared its ideology as socialdemocratic, and elected its national leader, Petre Roman. Realizing I was getting hell from both sides, I recalled the famous line of Shakespeare's hero Mercutio when he fell victim of the feud between the two leading families of Venice: "A plague on bot.ti your houses." So I became an independent observer of the Romanian political scene. The first version in which I participated failed miserably. My ambition now is to make sure the second revolution does not have the same end.

If Not, a Head Shall Fall! On 17 September 1990, the foreign affairs ministers of the European Economic Community were scheduled to meet in Madrid, and Romania was on the agenda. The miners' riot the previous June in Bucharest had been watched with horror on television all over the world, and Romania's image abroad looked appalling. Something had to be done, and quick, to improve that image so that the ~EC ministers would decide to include Romania in their aid programs for Eastern Europe. Initially, I suggested in a press interview that President Iliescu should invite the leaders of the opposition to discuss the issue of Romania's international status, and that Prime Minister Roman should take steps to accelerate the privatization process. The tone of the interview was rather mild and argumentative, and the two did not budge. Then I decided to make a stronger push on television, emphasizing that if President Iliescu and Prime Minister Roman did not act quickly, and as a result the EEC ministers maintained the penalty against Romania, a head would fall! The television interview had the effect of a thunderbolt. The next day, President Iliescu invited the leaders of the opposition to Cotroceni Palace, and Prime Minister Roman made a fulminating speech against those who obstructed privatization. Both saw to it that international press agencies released the news. Eventually, the EEC ministers decided in Madrid to start negotiations with Romania on aid programs. No head had to fall! The Terrorists Are Still Missing In October 1990, while on a lecture tour in New York, I read in the newspapers a dispatch from Bucharest saying that a military court had decided to suspend the trial of General Iulian Vlad, Ceau~escu's secret

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police chief, on grounds of insufficient evidence. I immediately placed a long-distance call to Bucharest, and my wife told me that not one single newspaper had reacted to the court's decision. I had to act rapidly. So I phoned Claude Erbsen, vice-president of Associated Press, and asked him to wire my statement urgently: The decision of the Bucharest military court to suspend the trial of General Iulian Vlad is an international scandal. He is the man who headed the most brutal and monstrous repressive machinery in Eastern Europe. And why is he tried? For only four days of December 1989, and the charge is "complicity to genocide." I consider this political and juridical aberration as a glaring defiance to the Romanian people, and first of all to the numerous fighters against dictatorship who have been followed, harassed, tortured, and some of them even killed by Securitate. From the very beginning, the forced limitation of General Vlad's responsibilities and culpability to only four days of December 1989 was designed to set scot-free the Securitate and its role in the totalitarian state, to totally ignore its criminal activities. It is absurd, a judiciary masquerade. If General Iulian Vlad is set free, this would confirm the worst suspicions regarding the attitude of the present regime about Ceau~escu's Securitate. But the question that troubled me was why nobody in Bucharest protested the court's decision. On 29January1991, the newspaper Adevarul published a long letter (twenty-eight pages) that had presumably been sent by General Vlad from prison. The letter dealt with a single person and had a single target: me. He presented his case starting with the meeting of the war council in the evening of 24 December 1989, when our confrontation had taken place, and continuing through the day of that letter-as though I was the only political person with whom the general had a conflict after the revolution. Interestingly, his whole demonstration boiled down to an effort to negate my assertion that the special units of Securitate and the Ministry of Internal Affairs participated in the terrorist activities of December 1989. He tried to minimize order number 2600, though he admitted "it was inspired by similar measures taken in other countries." The logical conclusion of General Vlad's letter, though he avoided spelling it out, is that in the hot days of the revolution it was the clashes between various units of the army that generated the gunfire exchanges-that soldiers killed each other and also killed the revolutionaries in the streets. That line of argument became the favorite thesis of the entire media apparatus that used to be controlled by the famous Disinformation Department of Securitate. There is no need for a list of informers and disinformers to be published: Anyone who looks through a collection

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of 1991 newspapers and notes the names of those who argued and documented most aggressively the theses of General Vlad will discover the network of journalists on the take of the Disinformation Department! Much has been said and written about the ingenious procedures and methods used by the Disinformation Department in the service of Ceau~escu. However, that department's greatest performance by far has been achieved since the revolution because it has succeeded in creating such total confusion around the terrorists that nobody knows anything about who they were and what they did. Of course, such a remarkable achievement would not have been possible without the perfect cooperation of the military prosecutor. The investigators carefully avoided looking into how order number 2600 had been implemented and, implicitly, what the officers of the special units provided in that order were doing in the days of the revolution. To be more specific, there were quite a few "lists of terrorists who surrendered or were arrested" that I saw when in power, one of which I retained and published in Adevarul (30January1991). In those lists were specified clearly these details: date, name of the regiment, who handed them over, where, who received them, observations. The list I retained mentioned 301 terrorists (two of them dead) handed over between 23 December 1989 and 2January 1990. On other lists I saw were written not only the names of terrorists but also their permanent residence. General Vlad's strong point is the fact that not a single terrorist is "available"-for the very simple reason that all terrorists who surrendered or were apprehended were later set free by Securitate or militia officers integrated in the army. The military prosecutor has never seriously investigated who the terrorists were or who set them free, as I found out when the chief prosecutor, Mugurel Florescu, visited me in December 1990. I had seen him in uniform with the rank of major in the days of the revolution, and in 1991 he was already general (only Ilie Ceau~escu made such a jump in so short a time). Exceptional merits! But what they are and who appreciated them are questions that could lead us to finding the key to the whole affair. Three years later, I suppose all documents and evidence that could throw a light on this enigma have disappeared. The public interest regarding the issue has also diminished, as shown in the September 1992 elections.

Shock Therapy Does Not Work in Romania The miners' rampage in September 1991 that toppled Prime Minister Petre Roman expressed in a most brutal and violent manner the reac-

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tion of industrial workers against the transition to a market economy. They destroyed and looted all private shops in their way-from modest kiosks and individual market stalls of peasants in their town of Petro~ani to the new luxury shops with elegant clothes and attractive windows just opened up on Bucharest's main boulevard. The furious thrust of miners reminded us of the early nineteenth-century English Luddite workers destroying the labor-saving machinery that they perceived as a threat to their jobs. Everybody was amazed by the complete turnabout in the miners' attitude. In June 1990, they had come in force to Bucharest to save the government and President Iliescu from the threat of the University Plaza anticommunist stronghold. At that time, the miners had vented their rage in the streets and in the auditoriums and labs of the university; they had devastated the headquarters of the opposition parties and newspapers, eventually being praised by President Iliescu for their "patriotic" performance. The whole civilized world had been shocked, and Romania had been severely penalized by the Council of Europe, with all economic aid, IMF credits, and G-24 programs canceled. In fall 1991, the coal miners of the Jiu Valley staged their assault on the nation's capital with a diametrically opposed aim: to topple Roman's government. Indeed, their main economic grievances had been met before their departure, and their monthly income of 13,00015,000 lei was among the highest in the nation-more than twice the average industrial wage in Romania at that time. Obviously, their main motivation was political, not economic. Why such a radical reversal? In the meantime, starting in September 1990, Roman had switched to a shock-therapy strategy. Prices were liberalized in three stages, rising three or four times; particularly painful for those on fixed incomes was the decision to cut from the budget the subsidies for food items that used to compensate workers under communism for their depressed wages. And, of course, the increases in wages and pensions granted by the government could not keep up with the skyrocketing prices of goods and services. With the recent adoption of the privatization law, the specter of massive unemployment was turning the workers into an angry and unruly crowd. Moreover, they saw that the beneficiaries of the revolution were the owners of private shops, the new businessmen, and entrepreneurs making a fast buck-while they, the workers, had become the underdog of society. That was the social background of the miners' violent protest. In July 1991 I wrote an article "Roman, Don't Cross the Red Light!" calling his attention to the fact that there is a psychological threshold-a limit to the sufferings and privations Romanians are prepared

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to bear-and that this threshold should not be crossed. Petre Roman reacted angrily to my article and never has wanted to see me since. In Eastern Europe, the first casualty of that social turning tide was Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazoweicki of Poland, where the Solidarity trade union turned into an opposition force; the second casualty was Petre Roman. In Romania, the social conflict erupted in violence because citizens have clear memories of the painful material privations they suffered under Ceau~escu, and a second round seems unbearable to them. However, the method chosen by the miners (violent assault on all democratic institutions, using big sticks, iron bars, and Molotov cocktails to set official buildings on fire) did not meet with the approval of Bucharest workers, who refused to support the miners' antidemocratic action. Instead, the professional organizers of previous riots in Bucharest, who used to form the core of the University Plaza stronghold, joined the miners and guided them through barricades, assaulting buildings and setting them on fire. They forgot the beating they had taken from the miners inJune 1990, and the two groups formed one of the "monstrous coalitions" so characteristic of Romanian political history. In the same spirit, opposition leaders who had condemned the miners' rampage of June 1990 now were grateful to them for serving their own aim-toppling Roman's government. Why Center-Right? In the parliamentary and presidential elections of 27 September 1992, the main opposition political force, the Democratic Convention (a coalition composed of the National Peasant Party and the Civic Alliance and supported by the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania and other smaller parties) was mounting a general offensive to gain power. Since the May 1990 elections, which the National Salvation Front and Iliescu won handily, significant changes have taken place both in the economic system and the social landscape. Therefore, it is only natural that those changes be reflected in the political field. The whole experience of postcommunist societies has shown that economic and social transformations caused by the return to capitalism have gone faster and more smoothly than changes in the structure, practices, and rituals of the political sphere. The transition from underdeveloped socialism to underdeveloped capitalism and the fact that the new system is not yet crystallized have created a social fluidity that prevents political parties from identifying their particular social base in order to court it and get its electoral support.

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Nevertheless, some political parties have shown greater flexibility than others in adapting to the socioeconomic situation. The Democratic Convention, led by Corneliu Coposu, has carried out the most significant political shift-from the street strategy of conquering power through violent demonstrations and shock brigades to an electoral strategy of populist slogans and rational persuasion; from the virulent hate campaign against the National Salvation Front to the statement that "a political alliance with the Front is not excluded"; from the slogan "trial of communism" and retribution of communist wrongdoings to the strategy of national reconciliation and the decision to choose as presidential candidate a former card-carrying member of the Communist Party (with its almost 4 million members). The other prewar political party, National Liberal, led by Radu Campeanu, decided in October 1992 to join the caretaker government of the independent premier Theodor Stolojan to overcome the political crisis triggered by the miners' revolt that had toppled Petre Roman. Only the National Salvation Front, born in the hot and turbulent days of the December 1989 revolution and credited with the first measures that had established democracy and a multiparty political system, failed to manage the changes in the nation. Embroiled in an acrid and ruthless personal clash between Iliescu and Roman, the NSF lost ideological direction and strategic purpose, splitting ultimately into two political parties and thus losing popular support-a fact so clearly expressed in the March 1992 local elections. And yet, since no political party could possibly hope to get an absolute majority in the elections, a coalition government was necessary. In my articles and television interviews I advocated a center-right coalition to form the government while anticipating the landslide victory of Iliescu in the presidential elections. Why a center-right government? The whole philosophy of the transition to democracy and a market economy in Eastern Europe lies in finding the natural course of the ongoing process and establishing in each stage of that process the proper political force to control and guide it further. Every attempt to deviate from the normal course to the right or to the left, to accelerate or slow down the process, will backlash, stirring up social or political convulsions. Shock therapy was such an attempt and had those consequences. The government tried to accelerate the economic reform while neglecting the social effects: sudden growth of unemployment, rampant inflation, rapid deterioration of the purchasing power of workers and all those on fixed incomes. Hence, the popular reaction against shock therapy. What is the present stage of transition in Romania?

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We now have a constitution and a body of legislation that provide the legal basis for the private sector to become predominant in agriculture, commerce, services, and even industry. But the implementation appears much more difficult than we expected, and the idea that the government should solve all economic problems is still going strong. Communist habits die hard, and even workers in private industries are asking the government to meet their grievances. In the social landscape the overhaul is more apparent. The working class, as a large, compact sociological unit, no longer exists. Within it, a social differentiation has been driven by privatization, market forces, and expansion of services-as reflected in the proliferation of new unions and the diversity of interests and grievances they are fighting for. In the meantime, capitalist structures are being rapidly restored, employers' organizations are being set up, and a large middle class is taking shape with lots of millionaires making a fast buck. At the other social pole, however, half a million workers are unemployed, 30 percent of families live under the poverty line, and many people are homeless. Social inequality is putting its mark on Romanian society. Briefly, we have entered the stage in which the market economy may acknowledge its real name: restoration of capitalism in Romania. What kind of government could possibly master in a natural way such a transformation of Romanian society? I feel the answer is a center-right one, and the reason is simple: Neither the left nor the centerleft can manage naturally and authoritatively the restoration of capitalism. Even if a center-left government accepts the imperatives of such a move dictated by integration of Europe, its ministers would act in that direction only reluctantly. As we look around, we see that the only governments in Eastern Europe that are managing the economic processes of the transitional stage are in Budapest and in Prague-both center-right. Only after the capitalist stimuli have helped the economy and foreign investments in production (not in consumption) have been attracted-which may take two or three years-will a center-left government become necessary to redress the social balance in Romanian society. This is how modern Western society functions at the end of this century; indeed, that political seesaw was at work in the 1992 American presidential election. Unfortunately, the September 1992 popular vote in Romania did not provide a parliamentary majority for a center-right government, and the underlying reason is that most Romanians are afraid of capitalism. They have experienced only the negative effects of the market economy: unemployment, inflation, and skyrocketing prices.

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In fact, the majority of the Romanian population wants the best of both worlds: They enjoy the rights and freedoms brought about by the new democratic regime, but they yearn for job security, free education and health care, and cheap food and rent, which were provided by the old communist regime. And they voted into power those who represented in their minds the synthesis of the two.

Epilogue No one dares today to speak about the attractions and merits of the communist ideal-about the compassion for the poor or the oppressed and the spirit of dedication it engendered all over the globe. But the movement did have the power to send your mind racing, your blood burning, and your life giving. What came out of that ideal in today's social practice and realpolitik is so far removed from it and so alien to its spirit that the reluctance to mention it is perfectly vindicated. In many ways what I called "state socialism"-with the addendum of being more state than socialismwas exactly the reverse of what Marx meant by communism. To begin with, it started in the wrong place. Surely, backward peasant Russia was so bewilderingly different from Marx's sociological model of industrial society that we can well understand why Soviet historians did not dare (or were not permitted to dare) to write about it. Historians of the future may well describe the October 1917 revolution as an antisystemic reaction against the dominance of the industrial West rather than a socialism-capitalism showdown. Russia and, later, the less developed countries of Eastern Europe were all faced with the formidable task of industrializing as rapidly as possible in a hostile international environment. The task proved so overwhelming that it was the strategy of overcoming underdevelopment rather than socialist principles that left its mark on the economic, social, and political features of those societies. Stalinism was nothing but a strategy of surmounting underdevelopment through force and repression. In other words, the structural position of Eastern Europe in the world economic system is a factor much more important than internal conditions in defining the character and behavior of those postrevolutionary societies. The tsarist legacy merely added the feudal peculiarities of what became the Soviet system. I deem it necessary to emphasize this point because the essence of the transition taking place today in Eastern Europe is from underdeveloped socialism to underdeveloped capitalism: In brief, the permanent background was, is, and remains underdevelopment. The world econ201

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Epilogue

omy is a hierarchical system in which Western capitalism holds a commanding position that enables it to dictate the rules of the game on the world market. In the 1980s Comecon occupied a marginal position in that system, as defined by three figures: almost 30 percent of world industrial production but only 11 percent of world trade and a mere 9 percent of world financial transactions. This disparity illustrates the inferior and subordinated role of its members in the world economy. The best proof that they were equally subject to the workings of the NorthSouth mechanism is the predominance of industrial machinery and know-how in the West-East trade and their growing foreign debt to Western banks. The East-West conflict was actually a North-South one, with Marxism-Leninism just a coverup of the real thing. The basic failure of communism lies in the fact that after years of central planning-seventy in the countries of the former Soviet Union and forty in Eastern Europe-the place those nations occupy in the structure of the world economic system remains almost the same. We are ten to fifteen years behind Western Europe and three or four times poorer. Hence, we must start all over again to try the same thing by other means-this time without any ideological pretense. Just building a market economy-that is the "grand design," albeit a rather mundane ideal that does not have the power to send your mind racing and your blood burning. And certainly nobody would give his life for the market. It is democracy with its inspiring freedoms and human rights that now fills up the ideological vacuum, competing with nationalism for the minds and hearts of people in postcommunist societies. In the euphoria generated by the successive revolutions of the late 1980s in Eastern Europe, our general assumption was that the two major tasks-establishment of democracy and transition to a market economy-would go hand in hand. Since both were considered essential, idyllic programs were drawn up throughout Eastern Europe that promised a quick advance of both reforms in perfect harmony. Two years later, we have discovered to our deep chagrin that between the two basic tasks there is actually a striking contradiction. People in Eastern Europe have seized with both hands the new freedoms and rights brought about by democracy and have started exercising them with full enjoyment but without the discipline and feeling of responsibility ingrained in the citizenry of the West over so many decades of practicing democracy. In Romania more than 100 political parties have sprung up, free unions are cropping up every month, and the number of newspapers and weeklies has jumped from less than 100 to more than 2,000. The point is that those people are using their newfound freedoms and rights, in particular the freedom to demon-

Epilogue

203

strate on the streets and the right to strike in order to protest the high prices of consumer goods and all the sufferings and privations brought about by the initial phase of the market. The first political casualty of that contradiction between market and democracy was Poland's prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the serious man of reform praised all over the West for his brave shock therapy. And the second casualty was Romania's prime minister, Petre Roman, toppled by rampaging miners. Actually, in historical perspective, the advent of the market economy in its capitalist stage went through classical authoritarian regimes: Cromwell in England, Napoleon in France, Bismarck in Germany. And it took Western capitalism about two centuries to reach the present balance between market and democracy. Therefore, shock therapy can be defined as a daring attempt to achieve in three or four years what Western capitalism achieved in a couple of centuries. In modern times, the four tigers of the Pacific Rim (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) have succeeded in making an efficient market economy under authoritarian regimes, some of them resorting to brutal ways and means. What makes this transition more effervescent in Eastern Europe is the sudden change in the social status of workers. No political leader in the East today will dare to admit publicly that market reforms coupled with assimilation of the new technologies are actually going against the interests of what used to be called the dominant working class. The stark and bitter truth is that the workers are the great losers of the revolution: They are required to work harder and better, which they resent, not being accustomed to that; they are faced with the specter of unemployment, something they have never experienced, and that scares and irritates them. Gone are job security and the special opportunities for education and political career they enjoyed in the past. On top of all these, they see that the real beneficiaries of the revolution are the new businessmen and entrepreneurs who make a fast buck and reap all the prizes and privileges of society. Small wonder that the sense of becoming the underdog of society makes workers strike not only for economic grievances but also for political ones. Last but not least, all of the traditional ethnic and national conflicts of both the Hapsburg empire and the Russian-Soviet empire, which have been kept in a historical freezer, are now coming to the fore in an outburst of nationalism that is sweeping the whole East and giving rise to violent demonstrations and riots, armed skirmishes and military interventions, secessionist movements and declarations of independence.

204

Epilogue

In brief, Eastern Europe is beset by economic decline and inequality, social unrest, and ethnic strife-all of them at a time when the new democratic institutions are not yet sufficiently strong and experienced to deal with them effectively. Consequently, the trend toward a more authoritarian regime is getting stronger. In Poland in November 1992, in the first fully free parliamentarian elections since World War II, the results were such as to indicate a general opinion that the nation was dissatisfied with the market reform. Hence, President Lech Walesa could hardly nominate a prime minister with a stable government; to keep the situation under control, he became increasingly authoritarian. Very soon, Boris Yeltsin followed suit, asking the Russian parliament to give him "emergency powers," and as soon as he got them, he issued a series of decrees lifting most controls over imports and exports and liberalizing prices. Many analysts are now saying that Gorbachev should have started first with perestroika and only afterward allowed glasnost. The conclusion is obvious: The whole process of transition in Eastern Europe requires an authoritarian political regime. What kind, keeping in mind the hostility to dictatorship accumulated by the population over decades of harsh communist rule? Equally true, Western Europe would veto any attempt to establish dictatorial regimes in the East, and none of the postcommunist societies can afford to ignore the viewpoint of the Council of Europe. What then? Theoretically, one could conceive of a government popularly elected with the mandate to enforce economic change whose authority would be based on the right mix between respect for basic freedoms and harsh enforcement of law and order. Dura Lex sed Lex used to say the Romans. Democracy, precisely because it lacks repressive ways and means, must be more and not less demanding with regard to observance of laws by all citizens-from top to bottom. In essence, this framework is a state of law in which the judiciary becomes a major source of authority-that is essentially what we are talking about. Could such a political system work in nations that have not known democracy for half a century? That is the ultimate question.

Notes Introduction 1. Lewis Feuer, ed., Marx and Engels, Doubleday, New York, 1959, p. 44. 2. The Securitate dossier dealing with my arrest and two-month investigation is marked TOP SECRET and ONE COPY ONLY, that copy for Ceau~escu.

Chapter3 1. Magazinlstoric, August 1990, p. 21. 2. Romania Liberd (daily), 23 August 1945. 3. This dialogue was reconstituted by King Michael's aides (who were following the scene from behind a heavy curtain) and was made public at the time. 4. Haralamb Zinca, $i a fost ora H (Then Came H Hour, a novel), Military Publishing House, Bucharest, 1971, pp. 143-146. 5. RomaniaLibertl, 23August1945. 6. Zinca, Si a fostoraH, pp. 181-182. 7. Ibid., pp. 200-202.

Chapter4 1. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Report at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Romanian Workers' Party of30 November-5 December 1961, Political Publishing House, Bucharest, 1961.

Chapters 1. For example, TheDialecticofWorldPolitics, Macmillan, New York, 1978.

Chapter6 1. Dumitru Popescu, Pumnul ~i Palma, Eminescu, Bucharest, 1981.

Chapter7 1. His biographer noted: "The country was much smaller, with a farming area about the same size as Iowa, and its problems and possibilities were on a scale that seemed more manageable. The uncertainties of the journey were beginning to fade, he was more relaxed and could deal directly with the Englishspeaking Brucan, with whom he established a lasting rapport." Harold Lee, Roswell Garst, Iowa State University Press, 1984, p. 191. 205

206

Notes

2. Ibid., p. 193. 3. From a Garst speech at a dinner, November 1955, Des Moines, Iowa. 4. Lee, p. 197.

Cha.pter8 1. Romania had four elementary classes and seven classes of high school. 2. World Socialism at the Crossroads, Praeger, New York and London, 1986, preface. 3. Silviu Brucan, "Gorbachev's Contradiction: Glasnost = More Power," World Paper, Boston, August 1988, reprinted by the International Herald Tribune, 6-7August1988.

Cha.pter9 1. Adevarul, 28August1990.

Cha.pter 11 1. David Binder noted in the New York Times (24 January 1990): "The endorsement of the decision to field candidates did not come without some discord. Mr. Brucan's New Year's Day announcement appeared to defy some council members who want the Front to stay out of politics."

Chronology of Events 1937

King Carol II called on Octavian Goga and A. C. Cuza, leaders of the right-wing anti-Semitic National Christian Party, to form the government. 1938 The king dismissed the Goga government, assumed dictatorial powers, and founded and installed in power a monopoly party, the National Renaissance Front. 1940 General Ion Antonescu seized power in a military coup, exiled Carol II and installed Michael I as king, established a fascist dictatorship, and concluded an alliance with Hitler. 1941 On 22 June Romania entered the war against the USSR as Germany's ally. Romanian troops crossed the Prut River and joined the Wehrmacht in the offensive on Soviet territory. 1944 On 23 August, King Michael I arrested Marshal Antonescu and his cabinet, denounced the alliance with Germany, and ordered the Romanian army to turn against the Wehrmacht. General Constantin Sanatescu was called to form the government with the political support of the National Bloc made up of four political parties: National Peasant, National Liberal, Social Democrat, and Communist. On 12 September, Romania signed an armistice with the USSR in Moscow. 1945 Petru Groza government took office in March with the key portfolios secured by communist leaders. The national conference of the Communist Party of Romania elected Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej as secretary-general of the party. 1947 In December, King Michael was forced to abdicate. 1948 The Social Democrats merged with the Communist Party to form the Romanian Workers' Party. A new constitution was adopted in April, and a scientist, Constantin Parhon, became the first president of the Republic. The wartime communist leader Lucretiu Patra~canu was arrested in February 1948 and subsequently tried and executed in 1954. 1952 Three leading communists-Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, and Teohari Georgescu-were purged. Gheorghiu-Dej became premier; Petru Groza moved to the presidency vacated by Parhon. 1955. On 3 October, Gheorghiu-Dej abandoned the premiership to Chivu Stoica, becoming president of the Republic. Romania be207

208

1958 1965 1974 1979 1980 1987 1989

1990

1991 1991 1992

Chronology of Events

came a member of the United Nations. The Warsaw Treaty was established with Romania as a member. Khrushchev decided to pull Soviet troops out of Romania. Gheorghiu-Dej died of cancer. The ninth congress of the Romanian Communist Party elected Nicolae Ceau~escu as secretary-general. Nicolae Ceau~escu elected president of the Republic by the National Assembly. Elena Ceau~escu became president of the National Committee for Science and Technology. Elena Ceau~escu appointed first vice-premier of the government. On 15 November, Bra~ov workers demonstrated against Ceau~escu's dictatorship. On 10 March, the BBC, Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America broadcast the Letter of Six in the Romanian language. Riots and rebellion began in Timi~oara 16 December. On 21 December in Bucharest, a mass meeting of 100,000 people in the Palace Square defied Ceau~escu with boos and catcalls, chanting Awake, Romanian! On 22 December, Nicolae and Elena Ceau~escu fled by helicopter and were arrested in the afternoon. That evening, the National Salvation Front was created, and around midnight Ion Iliescu, its president, read on radio and television the NSF's first communique to the nation. On Christmas Day, 25 December, Nicolae and Elena Ceau~escu were tried, sentenced to death, and executed. On 31 January, the Provisional Council of National Unity was constituted as the parliament of the new power with the participation of the other political parties; Iliescu functioned as president. The first free elections were held on 20 May. The NSF took 66 percent and Petre Roman formed its government; Iliescu was elected president with 85 percent of the vote. In September, about 10,000 miners from Jiu Valley went on a rampage in Bucharest and toppled Roman. Theodor Stolojan formed a caretaker government. In December, a new constitution was adopted by the parliament, and a popular referendum endorsed it. New elections were held in September and October. Iliescu was reelected president, and a center-left government was constituted with Nicolae Yadiroiu as prime minister.

International Perspectives: A Collection of Media and Policy Discussion

210

International Perspectives

The Other Comecon JVlembers Won't Have a Choice B ~~~~,~~s~;~;~~~:~~a~~

on resistance in Eastern Europe lo

Moscow's drive for change. the

pressure for integration is so power-

ful that by 1990 all East European countrie)o will have fallen in line. Why so short a time for such a l'Omplicated shifl'! By 1990. the tiveyear plans of the Soviet Union. P(>land and Hungary will be based on

the market mechanism of supply and demand. Czechoslm·akia and Bulgaria have already begun to move in the direction of a mar-

cautiou~ly

ket based on ~upply and demand.

Romania. with 75 percent of it!'I foreign trade limited 10 the Comecon countries. will have no choice.

East Germany is the only East Eu-

ropean ),late with an eL·onomic alter-

nutive. But spurning integration with

the rest of the East would make ii dependen1 on Wesl Germany. a difficult polilical choice. Cen1ral to lhis foreca.~t is lhe logic of the regional JXlWer struclure. In Easl and Wesl Europe. coun1ries adjusl to conform with the value!\ of the region. The need 10 conform is buttressed by NATO and the European Communi1y in the West. by the Warsaw trea1y and Comecon in 1he East. The logic of the West's democratic values compelled Spain. Portugal and Greece to renounce military dictatorship for multiparty systems. The Stalinist values that led to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring and the 1980 Solidarity movement in Poland now are reversed in Eastern Europe. Moscow's new leadership has concluded that unless it adapts the Soviet system to the requirements of the technological revolution. the Soviet Union will be unable

By Silvin Rl'nran to withstand the challenge of the increasingly l'tlmputerized West. The Soviet reforms are becoming ever more radical. Pervading the whole of Ealltern Europe are the new Soviet value!ut1;11nt;1111 ,\mni:: wparat1~1 undcn.'urrcnh. Thc) ha\'c puhlicl) a~lcU fur rnllln1l u1 er their

*'"

-·

been mar11inali1.ed and 50 have their de· mands. What nu!"! Whether the Popular Front

wil! kl•cp up the momentum, ~on!ICllidatc

11~ trcim:mlou~ popular l:Msc and tum tlK: enthusiasm of the mas~~ into a 5tro111 pohtieal force depends un MOKmv's politi· cal intdligcn...'C aml imagina1ion. These were certainly lacking in 1hc case of Armeni11. The pnliticiil dynamics of a national movement is sU