Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A period of terror ensued in which all the
prewar leaders, prominent intellectuals and
suspected dissidents were imprisoned or in-
terned in hard-labour camps. The most notori-
ous prisons were in Piteşti, Gherla, Sighetu
Marmaţiei and Aiud. Factories and businesses
were nationalised, and in 1953 a new Slavi-
cised orthography was introduced to obliterate
all Latin roots of the Romanian language, while street and town names were changed to
honour Soviet figures. Braşov was renamed Oraşul Stalin. Romania's loyalty to Moscow
continued until Soviet troops withdrew in 1958, and after 1960 the country adopted an in-
dependent foreign policy under two 'national' communist leaders, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-
Dej (leader from 1952 to 1965) and his protégé Nicolae Ceauşescu (leader from 1965 to
1989). By 1962 the communist state controlled 77% of Romania's land.
Ceauşescu refused to assist the Soviets in their 1968 'intervention' in Czechoslovakia,
his public condemnation earning him more than US$1 billion in US-backed credits in the
decade that followed. And when Romania condemned the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan
and participated in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games despite a Soviet-bloc boycott,
Ceauşescu was officially decorated by Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum paints a har-
rowing portrait of anti-Semitic horror in Romania
during WWII, chronicling how the state used vari-
ous brutal methods - aside from organised murder
- to rid itself of Roma and Jews.
Ceauşescu and The Grand Delusion
It's all but impossible for us to fully appreciate how hard life became under the megalo-
maniacal 25-year dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena. Political freedom
was
verboten
, as was freedom of the media (ownership of a typewriter could be punish-
able by death). TV and radio programs entirely revolved around the personality cult of
their venerable leader; the brainwashing of the population even stretched its tentacles into
schools. In the 1980s in his attempts to eliminate a $10 billion foreign debt and impress
the world, Ceauşescu exported Romania's food while his own people were forced to ra-
tion even staple goods. Unless you were a high-ranking member of the Communist Party
you had to queue for two hours for basics such as milk and potatoes, returning to a house
where electricity was turned off to save energy.
Along with bugged phones and recorded
conversations there were strict curfews. Few of
the dictator's sinister schemes were more
frightening than the pro-birth campaign, de-
signed to increase the working population from
23 to 30 million. In 1966 it was decreed: 'The
For an in-depth look at Romania since communism,
check out Tom Gallagher's
Modern Romania
:
The
