Ceausescu's "Era of Light"

Epoca Luminoasa - Epoca Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in 1965 after the death of Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej. At first he gained popular support from his rather national stance, demonstrating a degree of independence from Moscow and even condemning the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. This also gained him new friends abroad resulting in state visits to the USA, France and the UK when he stayed as a Royal guest at Buckingham Palace in 1979. Romania was even granted "Most Favoured Nation" status by the USA.
However, hidden behind this veneer, was a more sinister face - a Stalinist state with the worst Human Rights record in the Warsaw Pact. Inspired by visits to China and North Korea, Ceasescu embarked on massive industrialisation, greater austerity and social engineering measures aimed at the blending of town and country into a soulless, agro-industrial community. At the same time the personality cult of Nicolae Ceausescu and "Doctor, Engineer, Academician" Elena Ceausescu came to the fore.

>>1970s - Decline
The economy began to fail in the 1970s - by 1979 the huge, uneconomic oil refineries were functioning at 10% or their capacity, unrealistic targets were set for factory and agricultural workers alike and the standard of living plummeted. Despite Romania having been the bread basket of Eastern Europe production continued to fall as a result of collectivisation and rigid Stalinist policies which even placed quotas on food produced on individual plots. By 1981 bread rationing had been introduced and there were severe shortages resulting in hours of standing in queues. Meanwhile, Ceausescu dismissed the problems with comments that Romanians eat too much and in 1985 announced a "scientific diet" for all Romanians, controlling nutrition. In reality food supplies fell short even of this!

>>1980s - "Era of Light"!
By the 1980s life for the average person was very difficult as Austerity measures became ever more severe - food, oil and all quality goods were all exported to provide hard currency to repay international debts. However, the fear of the Securitate , the secret police, ensured that any criticism of the regime or uprising was immediately suppressed. They pervaded all aspects of society, it was often quoted that as many as 1 in 3 people were Securitate or informers of the Securitate, so you couldn't even trust close friends or family members. The reality was that the population was suppressed more by carefully spread rumour and the threat of arrest and imprisonment for the most trivial of reasons. Phones were routinely bugged and calls taped, though mainly in the workplace. Control was virtually total yet it was not until the latter years of the decade when Gorbachev began to bring a degree of liberalisation, that human rights abuses in Romania began to receive press attention in the West. By then Romania had served its purpose as a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union.
These are just a few examples relating to life under the latter years of Ceausescu:

>Food

 Many foodstuffs were rationed including meat, bread, sugar, and vegetable oil - despite this shortages ensured empty shelves in foodstores. Queues would immediately form whenever there was a food delivery, however poor the quality.

>Energy

 Petrol was rationed and electricity consumption severely curtailed - you could only use one 40 watt bulb in a room. Only one in every three streetlamps was switched on - often less. In addition powercuts played havoc, even disrupting industry and hospitals - operating theatres would be plunged into darkness and life support machines would fail. Fuel shortages lead to ambulances not attending emergencies if the patient was over 70. Heating was minimal and gas pressure was often so low that cooking was virtually impossible.

>Birth Control

 Perhaps the most appalling policies were those introduced to "boost" the population. Abortion and Contraception were abolished and all women in factories subjected to monthly gynaecological examinations to ensure that the laws were obeyed. From 1983 it became the duty of every woman to produce a minimum of 5 children. Childless and unmarried women were subjected to higher taxes whilst women producing larger numbers of offspring were declared "Heroine Mothers". The results are well known - the unwanted children of the orphanages and horrific deaths from back street abortions.

>Information

 The state controlled media including the daily newspaper of the party, "Scinteia" reported in great detail on Ceausescu, glorifying him and heaping praise on his wife, continuously reporting on the great advances the country was making in all fields of industry, agriculture, science and international relations. Television was restricted to a two hour programme, the bulk of which showed Ceausescu on his various visits receiving praise from crowds of people lining the roads or attending his speeches. This was "Big Brother" and Romania was stuck in "1984". Books were published in his honour heaping praise on him with (often dubious or out of context) quotes from international press and endless photographs, commissioned paintings and poems.

History had also been rewritten, in particular Ceausescu's part in the rise of Communism. The arrest of the Iron Guard leader, Antonescu, and the switch of alliance from the axis to the allies by King Michael on 23 August 1944 became a glorious communist uprising against imperialist and fascist forces.

Even contact with visitors from the West was restricted - any contact had to be reported to the Securitate within 24 hours. Despite all of this the people were not naive, they no longer believed the propaganda. However, the hardship of life and the constant fear instilled by the Securitate made organised resistance impossible and lead to a feeling of hopelessness. When the 1989 "Revolution" finally came it was the most bloody of all the former Warsaw Pact countries - once the people saw for themselves how vulnerable Ceausescu was nothing was going to stop them from gaining their freedom. It is no surprise that it was sparked in Timisoara since the people there had long received outside information via Yugoslav and Hungarian radio and television.

Life under Ceausescu was well illustrated by Ana Blandiana's banned poem 'Totul'

>>Systematisation

"Systematisation" was a plan to raze half of Romania's villages and rehouse the inhabitants in new "Agro-industrial" centres where they could be better controlled. The government argued that the villages were decrepit and that these new centres would free valuable land for agriculture and raise the standard of living by better provision of services.
The original plans were formulated in 1972 but the destruction didn't commence until the late 1980s. However, there were intense protests from the West, even from Hungary - unheard of in a Warsaw Pact country. The Germans and Hungarians stood up for the ethnic minorities of Romania ... the ethnic Romanians had no voice outside the country and their own plight was almost ignored. A Belgian organisation, Operation Villages Roumains, came into being with the aim of twinning every village in Romania with a village in the West to offer some rudimentary protection. Despite exaggerated reports of bulldozers flattening historic Saxon and Hungarian villages only two villages were wiped from the face of the map - these were both villages of ethnic Romanians located close to Bucharest. The inhabitants were given just 24 hours before their homes were flattened and the land ploughed over. They were rehoused in jerry-built apartment blocks. Nevertheless, a form of systematisation had been taking place - old houses were demolished in many small towns and the inhabitants rehoused in new apartment blocks

>>Palace of the People and the Boulevard of Socialist Victory

Of equal significance to the systematisation was the razing of one quarter of old Bucharest - the Uranus district which included 10 churches, 3 synagogues and a maze of old streets, villas and small houses - to create a palace fit for a megalomaniac. Now called the "Palace of Parliament", this building of gargantuan proportions, second only to the Pentagon in size, dominates the Bucharest skyline. It was built at the time when austerity measures were at their hardest and was to be the palace of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Leading to the "Palace of the People" and lined with apartments for the Party faithful and the Securitate is a Boulevard longer than the Champs Elysee, now renamed the Bulevard Unirii - the project was never completed as can be realised by the rusting cranes at the far end of the Bulevard. The "palace" is open to the public and is used principally for trade shows and conferences.
Piata Unirii and the former "Boulevard of Socialist Victory" leading to "Ceausescu's Palace"

>>Danube - Black Sea Canal ( "Canalul Mortii" - the Canal of Death )

The idea to construct a canal to connect the Danube with the Black Sea , and save shipping a considerable journey, was first proposed in 1856 when the Dobrudja region was still under Ottoman rule. It was, however, not until 1949 that such a project was launched by the Communist party. Gheorghiu-Dej declared it would be the "graveyard of reaction"; indeed it was soon dubbed the "Canal of Death" - 60,000 people arre said to have perished working on the canal between 1949 and 1954 when the project was abandoned. They came from all parts of society and included peasants and landowners who had resisted collectivisation, priests, businessmen, aristocrats, relatives of prisoners, people who had tried to flee the country ... in effect anybody who may have opposed the new regime. All were labelled as traitors or enemies of the State and were housed in concentration camps at Capul Midia, exposed to the extremes of climate and temperature. In addition, the rock-breaking work, starvation diet, diseases such as TB and dysentery, and the beatings and torture by the Securitate all took their toll.
Ceausescu's inauguration of the
Danube-Black Sea Canal in 1984

Ceausescu ordered work on the canal to be resumed in 1973. This time it would follow a more practical route, connecting with the Danube at Cernavoda then running eastwards for 60 km to reach the Black Sea at Agigea to the south of Constanta. The original course had been through the Canara hills to reach Capul Midea near Navodari. Modern machinery was employed but it still required 30,000 workers and was the biggest investment project of its time. It was inaugerated by the Conducator in 1984 but by 1987 was running at only a tenth of its capacity and this grandiouse project, though useful, is widely regarded as another of Ceausescu's "White Elephants".
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