Bread, Salt & Plum Brandy by Lisa Fisher Cazacu

I bought this book after finishing William Blacker’s Along the Enchanted Way – the two accounts of Romania (roughly contemporaneous) could not be more different from each other, like chalk and cheese and reading it came as a shock! Please do not get me wrong, one does need  shock therapy in order to take a harder look at ourselves and see how one could improve one’s own lot: according to Lisa Fisher Cazacu there is still a lot to be done about it and I believe her.

This is as straight as you could get it – an unadulterated uncosmetisized account on Real Romania, ten years after the fall of Communism. Its title, Bread, Salt & Plum Brandy alludes to the tradition of hospitality in offering a symbolic piece of bread with a pinch of salt as a welcoming gesture to a visiting stranger. As for the plum-brandy bit this is the national liquor which accompanies merry-making and the author had an ample taste of both. But who is this young gutsy lady who threw herself in the turmoil of working as a  American Peace Corps volunteer, on an assignment to this God-forsaken  port on the Lower Danube? This is the nearest to the Balkans as you can get!  Well, she is a buoyant, enthusiastic Texan who  is ready to fore go her TexMex food, her Pizza Margaritas and her Starbuck coffees (oh how she misses all these, but then she made a stick to beat herself with) in order to do good and improve the lot of poor Romanian youth. Nothing wrong with this, quite the contrary: this is very commendable, except that Romanians are not used to altruism and suspect poor Lisa of some ulterior motives -

May be she is an American spy, trying to steal Romanian secrets?

What secrets? these the reader will soon be cognizant of,  by reading this candid account which often dissolves into hilarious scenes of the Theatre of the Absurd. But I am not going to spoil the potential readers pleasure of discovering for themselves the funny side of  this clash of cultures. And clash there  is and plenty of it, but Lisa is not going to be easily defeated: better still, in the process she gains TWO ‘pluses’, not one:

FIRSTLY she comes to realize  the true blessing of being born in a country where  public services function properly and are taken for granted:

what, no bus service to take children to school? What, no compulsion by Romtelecom the national telephone company to fix the fault on Lisa’s line at a weekend?

Who needs a phone, anyway?

The list of Ubuesque mishaps is endless and a great eye-opener both for the reader who could not imagine it and for the natives who got used to and put up with it for far too long!

But, thankfully, not all natives – for Romania is experiencing a brain drain of unprecedented scale and not just brains but muscles too – Romanians emigrate in droves to get away from the quagmire of corrupt officialdom – in the last two decades more than two millions mostly young able-bodied people have voted with their feet and left their country , not in good cheer, but in despair …

One of the statistics is Lisa’s Romanian husband and this is the SECOND ‘plus’ I had in mind as a benefit of Lisa’s Romanian experience: for this rumbustious and unflappable young lady would not allow her unpleasant experiences tarnish her romance with a dashing Mr. Cazacu. They get married and beat the bureaucracy at its game (o yes, even the American bureaucracy because we learn that there is some…) to live “happy ever after” in Texas!

Who needs a better happy-ending than this? in fact, on reflection there are bits in this account to please each and all readers. I for one, after overcoming  the initial shock, I enjoyed this brave story in spite of its stark comments, or perhaps because of it. Thank you Lisa!

GIURGIU, the Danube port where Lisa Fisher Cazacu was posted. This is a historic lithograph dating from the mid 19th century showing a market Fair; in the background a Turkish mosque built by the Ottomans (only its minaret survives today) and further away a Christian Orthodox church. Giurgiu in the 21st century has remained a Balkan backwater.

For a “feel” of other travelers accounts of the river Danube (1800-1940) see our other article:

Romantic Travels on the Lower Danube (1800 – 1940)

http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/2009/04/romantic-travels-on-the-lower-danube-1800-1940/

Herta Müller has a sharp sense of realities, as demonstrated in her article published in Tagesspeil of 17 July 2008, which is echoed by the Frankfurter Rundschau:

“It is a scandal that Romania put forward as its representatives (in Germany, a.n.) two persons who during the dictatorship (a.n. Ceausescu’s) were collaborators of the secret services. “

She is joined in her protest by her former husband, the writer Richard Wagner who adds:

As it happened before in the past we shall carry on talking about an East-West dialogue between useful idiots and secret services informers, about cultural exchanges as well as about trends and research methods. All of it as if nothing had happened, as if nothing mattered. Quite the contrary it does very much matter both in Germany and in Romania. One has barely started understanding the past that one falls victim to amnesia. Democracy remains helpless whilst being denied a template of real reference values.

(For more information Google “Blouse Roumaine – an Anthology of Romanian Women”)

BUY THE BOOK:

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

Carissima Principessa,

You were kind enough to send me a link and I thank you for it:
http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2005/06_Giugno/19/suora.shtml
Romania, giovane suora muore crocifissa

Era stata legata per tre giorni a una croce di legno da quattro suore e da un abate per un rito di esorcismo

[img align=right]http://www.romanianstudies.org/images/articles/exorcism/mad_priest.jpg[/img]BUCAREST – Una giovane suora di 23 anni, tenuta per tre giorni legata ad una croce di legno da quattro suore e da un abate per un rito di esorcismo, è morta l’altro giorno in un monastero ortodosso della Romania orientale. Lo ha reso noto la polizia di Vaslui secondo quanto riferisce l’agenzia romena Mediafax.

«INDEMONIATA» - «Era in preda agli spiriti maligni, abbiamo pregato per lei. Dal punto di vista religioso ci siamo comportati correttamente» ha detto alla polizia il priore del monastero di Tanacu, in provincia di Vaslui, secondo Mediafax. In precedenza la giovane suora, probabilmente affetta da turbe schizofreniche, era stata rinchiusa per diversi giorni in un edificio annesso al monastero, con mani e piedi legati e senza acqua o cibo.

INCHIESTA – Ora la polizia, ma anche le autorità religiose, hanno avviato una inchiesta per accertare come sono andate le cose. Finora si sa soltanto che la giovane suora, ritenuta in possesso del diavolo, prima di morire era rimasta per tre giorni appesa alla croce in legno, senza bere e senza mangiare e con un asciugamano legato intorno alla bocca come bavaglio.

19 giugno 2005

With regards to the Orthodox nuns and the fundamentalist priests: in a nutshell this is the consequence of Ceausescu’s policies of forced pregnancies, who made abortions illegal and contraceptives unavailable (sounds like the Catholic Church – doesn’t it?).
The dictator used to enjoin the populace:
“Comrade women, to have babies it is your patriotic duty!”
Quite!

Yes it sounds odd – a connection between the death of a nun in 2005 and the dictator’s fixation with population growth some thirty years past. Yet there is a tenuous link between the two events: let me explain why:

During the 1970′s and 1980′s Romania had a population reduced to starvation, which could not feed its babies and had them instead abandoned to orphanages. This happened because Ceausescu was exporting all food to repay the national debt incurred over a forced industrialization that went wrong.
This nun, whose death made headlines, was aged 29, (not 23, as stated in the foreign press) therefore she was born in 1976. .In 1979, as three year-old infant, she was taken to an orphanage, where conditions were appalling and children treated like animals, because under a communist dictatorship (and YES there were plenty of militant communists in Western Europe, including Italy) people were reduced to the basest existence, they were treated like cattle.

By the time she came out of orphanage, aged 18, this girl, who had no qualifications and no family support to turn to, was completely damaged and rudderless. The case was typical of all abandonned children.
The post-Communist regime of oligarchs made of the children and grandchildren of the old Communist guard and of the second and third echelons of the repressive Communist Party did excellent business with the EU (Berlusconi included, but also with corrupt French and Swedes, and sundry EU officials and Americans.) All they did was to become richer at the expense of the poor, rather than take care of the most vulnerable people such as this young girl’s generation.
The heirs of Ceausescu, in the Socialist (ex-communist) Party enjoyed the same privileged relationship with the West: not only had they become billionaires (in dollars) overnight, through fraudulent contracts, illegal commissions, insider dealings of privatised state industries and land, but they expected foreign charities to improve the lot of their orphanages, which was the creation of the communist system. They did nothing to prepare these orphans for a new life, once they reached the age of adulthood. They did nothing to retrain to bring a new attitude to creating new jobs and new opportunities for the young, so long as their dollar bank balance in offshore accounts (like the Virgin Islands) looked well garnished. They pandered instead to naked extreme nationalism – the easiest manner to target the poor and the dispossessed.

On the other hand, the Orthodox Church Hierachy, which connived with the dictator Ceausescu to demolish its own churches and dismantle religion, was penetrated to the bone by Secret service agents, under the guise of priests, who were informing on the believers and the lay population alike; these priests were like torturers and now they carry on religious services, as if nothing has changed.

[img align=right]http://www.romanianstudies.org/images/articles/exorcism/in_coffin.jpg[/img]

After 1989, when Ceausescu was shot, there was a new drive in recruiting new priests, but the old system of selection did not produce any better, more enlightened specimens, quite the contrary they got their new breed of priests amongst the semiliterate and the reductive – and the priest in charge of killing the nun was one such example.
In fact, both priest and nun were the victims of the same old communist practice, of a whole fractured nation, which affected four generations:
1. the generation of our grandparents, who were in their 60′s when the communists came to power (you were lucky in Italy not to succumb to the same system and you probably know how close you were to suffering the dictatorship after the Second War), They had all their savings confiscated, and were given no pension – just left to be looked after by their family, which could hardly survive. Much of this generation died in slave labour camps and in prisons
2. then the generation of our parents (who were in their mid 30′s when the communists took over and died before Ceausescu was put down, their lives completely ruined: this generation too had its share of prisons and persecution
3. followed by our own generation, who were in primary school after the war – another fractured generation, which produced many exiles (most of my school contemporaries live abroad)
4. and finally the last generation of people like this nun and like this priest, the generation of unwanted children born in the 1970’s and 1980’s, who filled the orphanages and now are filling the brothels of Western Europe or the ranks of legal and illegal immigrants, more than one million in the last 15 years mostly people aged 30, who settled in the US, Canada, Australia, or Western Europe.

I know that for the un-initiated this story of the nun who died crucified in a convent, somewhere in the depths of Moldavia, has an awesome anecdotic value, taken out of context… yet for the politically aware it is, sadly, only the natural progression of a communist system that was perpetuated with the connivance of the fellow-travelers in the West, (of the French and Italian Communist parties of Maurice Thorez, Jacques Duclos and Palmiro Togliatti, of the Western leaders and heads of state who sucked up to Ceausescu, instead of exorcising him: de Gaulle, Giscard d’Estaing, Mitterand, Harold Wilson, Nixon, Carter, the Shah of Iran, the King and Queen of Belgium, and Peron, to mention only a few.

[img align=right]http://www.romanianstudies.org/images/articles/exorcism/to_cemetery.jpg[/img]I am afraid that the social scars left by 40 years of Communist dictatorship run deep and will be there to stay and their consequences will reappear from time to time, like the effect of nuclear fall-out, long time after the explosion. The story of a crucified nun in the Romanian Far East is the story of a crucified people, which suffered the injustice in the glare of the whole world who chose to ignore it, because it made no copy and now that it does make the headlines one turns the truth on its head, to fit the stereotypes of the day.

On a brighter note – I was sent by a friend a beautiful poem in Sardinian language: what a splendid language that is. I am sure that as you are keen of poetry you will enjoy it.
Love,
Constantin
http://www.lingrom.fu-berlin.de/sardu/Sardinian-Text-Database/mortfrad.html

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EDITOR’S NOTE (2009):

Read more about the Romanian Social Landscape in:

Blouse Roumaine – The Unsung Voices of Romanian Women

(Centre for Romanian Studies, London, 2009)

(1,100 pages, 160 Biographies, 600 quotations)

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

THEFT OF A NATION, ROMANIA SINCE COMMUNISM

TOM GALLAGHER

Paperback 320 pages (November 1, 2003) £16-50
Publisher: C. Hurst & Co
ISBN: 1850657165
Hardback: xxii, 424pp. (Jan. 2005),£45.00

Romanian Publication (in Translation )
Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest November 2004

‘This is a unique work on an important, but neglected, subject. It deals with the transition from totalitarian to democratic rule in Romania and examines the question of why the promotion of reform of the political and economic system in Romania has proved to be more difficult than in most of the other countries of Central Europe. In doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the political history of Romania and Central Europe, as well as to the literature on the dynamics of political and social change in the region.’ ––Professor Dennis Deletant Since 1989 Romania has gone from communist isolation under the megalomaniac Nicolae Ceausescu to being a key player in America’s war against terrorism. This strategically-placed country has become a front-line state for nervous Western governments keen to secure oil routes from the Middle East. It joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union is welcoming it into membership by 2007 on flexible terms despite a serious democratic deficit and glaring economic weaknesses. Tom Gallagher analyses how the country is seeking to transform its image while many of the key legacies of dictatorship have remained intact. Problems that have made the country a byword for misrule – a corrupt ruling elite, unaccountable intelligence services, and nationalist extremists adept at exploiting social misery – remain largely unresolved. Only in 2000, it was in Romania that the best electoral performance so far of any of Europe’s radical extremist movements was obtained. The reconciliation between the West and a predatory ruling elite which rules by strong-arm methods, has damaging implications for Western security. The mishandling of Romania has tarnished the EU’s reputation for strengthening democracy in the Balkans, the key regional arena for its emerging new foreign policy.This book argues that another serious miscalculation by the West has been made as it scrambles to find local allies in a troubled neighbourhood. It predicts that Romania will be a future trouble-spot unless efforts to resume much-needed reforms are undertaken.

Review and order on www.amazon.co.uk website:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1850657165/reviews/202-0798309-3490261

Book Description

Romania had the chance of a fresh start politically after the collapse of the brutal and macabre dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Instead bad governance has persisted within an incomplete democatic system with disastrous results for many millions of people.

Tom Gallagher explores why continuity rather than change has been the dominant feature of political life after 1989. He provides an inspring portait of the post-communist leadership centred around Ion Iliescu, Adrian Nastase and their clients and allies, showing how defense of private or group interests has usually been their primary concern. He shows how they promoted bogus nationalist movements in order to cover up systematic misuse of state resources. The failure of the non-communist democratic alternative, centred around Emil Constantinscu, Romania’s President from 1996 to 2000, to break this pattern of misrule, is closely examined.

The author warns hat NATO and EU membership are unlikely to provide the impetus for national recovery unless convincing local partners are found, prepared at all times to defend Romania’s national interests. The danger that Romania wll become a Latin American-style island of backwardness inside hte EU is a real one as the ruling PSD agrees entry terms that severely weaken Romanian agriculture, industry and commerce. Incisive portraits of the political elite, the security services and the new economic oligarchy are provided in this study. Tom Gallagher is convinced that Romania can break free from the communist past and enjoy close and fruitful links with the West only if strong reformist movements emerge from increasingly self-aware sections of society that reject the political practices of the past.

SYNOPSIS
Problems that have made the country a byword for misrule – such as a corrupt ruling elite, unaccountable intelligence services and extreme nationalists adept at exploiting social misery – remain largely unresolved. Only in 2000m it was in Romania that the best electoral performance so far of any of Europe’s radical extremist movements was obtained. As NATO and the European Union expand eastwards, the success of the most important shift in European security since the end of the Cold War is bound up with the outcome of necessary reforms in Romania.
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FURTUL UNEI NATIUNI. ROMANIA DE LA COMUNISM INCOACE

Tom GALLAGHER

Furtul unei natiuni. Romania de la comunism incoace
Editura Humanitas, Noiembrie 2004, seria istorie
432 pagini,
ISBN 973-50-0848-3

http://www.humanitas.ro/carti/carte.php?id=1611

Romania vazuta de Tom Gallagher e una fara retusuri. In instrumentarul cercetatorului nu exista nici minciuni cosmetice, nici partipriuri de conjunctura. Miza unei asemenea carti sta tocmai in capacitatea autorului de a ramane echidistant si de a trata subiectul cu detasarea specifica profesionistilor. Tom Gallagher a vizitat Romania si a ajuns s-o cunoasca in amanunt. Nimic nu ii este strain, de la mazilirile pronuntate de Inalta Poarta la excursiile mineresti in centrul Bucurestiului. Furtul unei natiuni nu cuprinde retete de insanatosire sau sfaturi rostite din varful buzelor. Volumul inseamna in primul rand o cantitate enorma de informatii sistematizate impecabil. Gallagher a cotrobait prin arhive, a consultat colectiile ziarelor, a petrecut sute de ore pe Internet, a discutat cu oameni din miezul evenimentelor si a aflat tot ceea ce il interesa. Rezultatul este, fara dubiu, impresionant. Cititorul roman avea nevoie de un demers neutru si meticulos, de un ghid prin trecutul indepartat sau recent, de o minienciclopedie a succeselor si esecurilor nationale. Exact asta ii furnizeaza Furtul unei natiuni. Nu stim cati dintre puternicii de azi sau de ieri vor parcurge cartea si se vor programa pentru un examen de constiinta. Este cert insa ca publicul va avea ocazia sa vada nu doar cum ne privesc altii, ci in special cat mai avem de mers pana cand vom atinge limanul normalitatii.

Tom Gallagher

Profesorul Thomas Gerard Gallagher (n. 1954) a studiat la Universitatea din Manchester si a scris o teza de doctorat cu titlul „Teoria si practica autoritarismului in Portugalia“. In prezent el preda la Universitatea din Bradford, unde este de ani buni seful catedrei de studii despre pace. Manifesta un interes statornic pentru Romania, pentru regiunea balcanica si pentru Europa de Sud-Est, fapt dovedit de cartile publicate pana acum: Romania dupa Ceausescu: politica intolerantei, Democratie si nationalism in Romania, 1989-1998, Europa proscrisa: Balcanii de la otomani la Milosevici, De la tiranie la tragedie: Balcanii dupa Razboiul Rece, Balcanii in noul mileniu: in umbra pacii si a razboiului. Totodata, Tom Gallagher editeaza impreuna cu G. Pridham volumul Experimentul democratic: schimbarile de regim in Balcani, iar impreuna cu A. Williams lucrarea Socialismul sud-est european. Ultimele cercetari despre tara noastra ii asigura informatiile necesare pentru Furtul unei natiuni. Romania de la comunism incoace, in afara cartilor pe care le-a publicat, universitarul britanic este o prezenta frecventa in revistele de specialitate, dintre care mentionam Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics, European History Quarterly, Security Dialogue, History Today, The National Interest, Democratization, Balkanologie, Ethnic and Racial Studies etc. Invitat la numeroase conferinte de profil istoric, Tom Gallagher calatoreste la Zagreb, Praga, Budapesta sau Garmisch-Parterkirchen, unde vorbeste despre probleme de balcanologie, initiative politice regionale, etnicitate si democratizare.

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One unexpected surprise (and irritation) which the Romanian victors experienced since the Paris Peace Treaty, was the unwelcome association with vampires and vampirism, which came about as part and parcel of the union with Transylvania, after WWI.

Ever since the demise of Nicolae Ceausescu, the latest Romanian dictator to be associated with vampirism, the accusation of “sucking the blood of the people” was a common Marxist-Leninist syntagm. Yet the heirs of the post-Cerausescu’s regime got the practice to an even finer if more refined tune.

Unlike their political predecessors, current Romanian leaders tried instead to capitalise on their unfortunate image and exploit it by turning tough luck to financial gain. The idea of a “Dracula Park”, equivalent of a vampire Disney land was much heralded to the world at large and its location to be was none other than Dracula’s own home town in Transylvania. The idea hatched in the alembic of the Romanian Government’s inner sanctum was so irresistible that Government ministers headed by PM Adrian Nastase, to the lesser fry but, nevertheless, distinguished politicians, gave their blessing to this latest extraordinary wonder (and bought shares in the vampire Company): such is Romania, full of surprises and of fun.

Sadly for this unprecedented Transylvanian venture, involving EU funds (and advice from Price Waterhouse?), Dracula Park also attracted the attention of consummate environmentalist and arch-conservationist Charles Windsor, of Welsh and Cornish repute.
Amongst Charles’ team of advisers was an indomitable champion of Romanian causes, Jessica Douglas Hume, a lady with a thorough experience of things Romanian, who two decades earlier defied Ceausescu’s own secret police, which wrestled with her and declared her a “very dangerous lady”: she survived another day to burry Dracula’s Park forever, having earlier saved scores of Romanian villages from the threat of Ceausescu’s bulldozers.
Faced with the adverse publicity of this illustrious British tandem, Prime Minister Nastase had to back-pedal.

Vampirism is a pre-Christian tradition, which entered the European psyche since times immemorial. The phenomenon fascinated many generations of British from Byron and Mary Shelley to Bram Stoker. It also interested a young lady graduate of Bedford College London, Dr. Agnes Kelly (1875 –1929), married to a Romanian scientist Gheorghe Munteanu-Murgoci, who brought her to Romania. Kelly’s publications on Romanian vampires still make today classic reading.

Few people know that by virtue of her Anglo-Romanian marriage, Miss Kelly’s family members included such relations as a son-in-law, who was a distinguished President of the Cambridge Debating Society, a graduate in Theology and Anglican Minister who became Dean of Peterborough Cathedral, but also, most improbably, in Romania, yet another Minister, a step-son, a communist government minister, that is, in the person of Miron Constantinescu. Ironically Miron Constrantinescu was an intimate associate of Ceausescu: perhaps never ever before had an Anglican God come so perilously close to a Romanian vampire.

Recent Romanian politics confirmed a long-established truth, namely that Romanian communists are seasoned politicians and no sooner they lick the wounds of their latest defeat, (dismissed as a mere, temporary set-back), that they come to the charge with yet a bigger and better idea: if vampirism cannot help popularity at the polls, surely necrophilia can. The switch of tactics is even more pressing as the Presidential elections are to take place, very soon and the current incumbent had a bitter taste of his plummeting popularity, on an official visit to Toronto. In Canada, just as he was to deliver an official speech, a young Romanian exile hit Iliescu on the head with a cheese tart: “it is for people like you, that we were forced to take the road of exile”. Iliescu’s Culture Minister, Razvan Teodorescu, came to the President’s rescue, labelling the unruly crowd as a bunch of “mentally retarded”. The Canadian police did not intervene – they looked on bemused, as the gesture fell within the limits of the freedom of expression, allowed in Canada on such political rallies… not so in Romania, where the police and tribunals are mere pawns of the existing ruling Socialist party and where the unwary are dragged into lengthy and expensive court suits. Freedom of the Press is on the list of endangered species in Dracula’s country, and “Journalistes sans Frontieres’, “Amnesty International” and other Human Rights organisations are well aware of the Romanian practice.

Mindful of the great leverage which Romanian exiles, and there are over one million of them since 1990, alone, hold in the 2004 elections, President iliescu had made unrelenting attempts at attracting new voters. Amongst these are targeted Romanian royalty and royalists as well as the aristocratic families and their sympathisers:

Steeped in history and fashioned in pomp and pageantry historical events are staged, all over the country, with the President and government officials in attendance: nearly without exception all these shows involve a reburial of a monarch or a medieval prince, or, perhaps, the 500th memorial service of some emblematic ruler.

The latest such “historic event” was the blessing of the Cotroceni monastery church, razed to the ground by Ceausescu, in 1980 and rebuilt by Iliescu. The Monastic complex of historic buildings is the very presidential palace in Bucharest, which was erected in the 17th c by the ruling prince (voyevode) Serban Cantacuzino. His earthly remains were brought back for re-interring, before the smell of fresh paint had time to disappear. Military honours were observed by the Presidential guard, in the waft of Orthodox incense and Byzantine chants. The exiled Cantacuzinos, from the four corners of the world gathered fro the memorial service held by patriarch Teoctist the bearded cleric who presided over the very demolition of the church he now blessed. As head of the Romanian church, a few years ago, Teoctist invited the Pope to visit Romania, the first time ever the Pope visited an Orthodox country, before Greece or Russia where he still hopes to be invited. Last months, Iliescu visited the Pope and although the Romanian Government’s promises of returning the Catholic and Uniate churches the properties confiscated by communists remained without cover, Iliescu, on this occasion, allocated, as an electioneering ploy, some grant to the Catholics in Romania.

All these historic forays border on obsessive religion and cult of the dead. They are carefully choreographed events all be it copying in a sense some of the national funerals and expression of general grief shown, in a different context in the West (the funeral of Princess Diana? Maybe the pilgrimage to Compostella, or to Lourdes?)

But in Romania, the cult of the dead and the rich traditions that surround burials, memorial services and wakes have a propensity for grief soon veering to public revels. Such bi-polarity is good political capital for the Party in Government anxious to extend its position by another four-year term: the grief helps a communion of spirit and gives a sense of history, whilst the ensuing revels demonstrate confidence and optimism in the leadership of the day. In this way history becomes the engine of the governmental hearse: the confused electorate attending such pantomime may well ask – are these people on the way out, or, rather on the way in, yet again, for a fifth term, but one, since 1990?

All the above shenanigans, performed by a Communist and a close aide of Ceausescu, may appear hilarious in any democracy, but in Romania, a country systematically plundered by the Iliescu’s party, it has a particularly sad if unsavoury repercussion, as hundreds of thousands of young Romanian professionals, 9and even unskilled workers and youngsters seeking their fortune) cross the border, legally or illegally, by any means in order to make a living in the West.
The haemorrhage is one which is completely misunderstood by Iliescu who said at a recent Seminar on Romanian Youth emigration, held at Sinaia. The nearest translation of the President’s inspired dictum is presented below, in the Anglo-Saxon vulgate, to which we are used:

“Whilst Europe was frolicking, we (Romanians) were under the domination of great empires. The Western nations did not count only on their own ‘fat’, but rather lived for centuries off other people’s stamina; such is their historic advantage. We (Romanians) had instead to pay tax to the Ottoman Porte.”
(….)
The Romanian President went on suggesting that today’s Romanian Government ought to be compensated, by the West, for such brain drain

Quite!

If anybody was to receive compensation from the Western countries, employing since 1990 more than one million Romanians, it should be not the Romanian Government for the loss of skilled labour, but the emigrants themselves .

It is the regime of Mr Ilescu who forced these desperate people to be uprooted, to be forced into exile, with all the related pain and drama of broken families and broken lives.

Mr Iliescu’s statement borders on insensitivity, matched only by Ceausescu’s practice of passports for dollars, the kind of “blood-money” exacted from desperate peoples wishing, for decades past to escape communism.
For Ceausescu sold hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans and Jews to the governments of West Germany and Israel, respectively, Now his successors are forcing the poor and the desperate native Romanians out of the country on the excuse that such poverty is the result of centuries-old taxation by the Ottomans!

Thankfully the old Roman empire was left out of the political discourse, but before the Presidential campaign is over, surely it may not be too late to remind one of the Dacian gold carried to Rome some 2,000 years ago, rather than the National Bank of Romania’s gold reserves lost to Moscow 85 years ago.

Before the November elections the New Ottomans carry on blaming the Old, as if there was no tomorrow, but mostly as if the electorate was dim and dumb.