Dictator Causescu ruled over Romania like a feudal prince

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• SOCIALIST ACTION. JANUARY 1990 11 The Ceausescu clique-including his wife and family—transformed Romania's Stalinist regime into a personal dictatorship.

No one since Stalin has done more to discredit socialism, although he really had little to do with socialism. Even the Los Angeles Times admitted in an editorial: "Causescu's iron grip on government and his ruthless secret police force have less to do with socialist ideology than with raw personal power. He and a large network of relatives run Romania's government like a family business."

Ceausescu and Elena mixed aspects of the Stalinist prototype with qualities of Byzantine regimes like the 6th century bloodstained rule of Emperor Justinian I and Queen Theodora. Causescu's security group, the Securitate, answered to his direction only. The Securitate held higher priority than the army (itself the second largest in Eastern Europe) and received the best and newest equipment.

Bolstered in its loyalty by numerous privileges, the Securitate's benefits exceeded those of the Communist Party (CP). The arrests, internal exile, and executions of thousands—-and the use of from one-fourth to one-third of the population as informers— are indications of the extent of political repression.

Golden supperware

Ceausescu's gaudy lifestyle made disgraced East German leader Erich Honecker look like a pauper. Swiss banks report some $400 million in accounts in Causescu's name.

When revolutionists entered the mansions of the Causescu family, they found paintings from the national museum, closets filled with furs and jewelry, solid gold bath fixtures and supperware, and even a golden scale to measure out imported meats for the family dog.

Ceausescu's increasing power isolated him from reality and contributed to his pursuance of numerous untenable policies that became central causes for his downfall. Most crazy of Ceausescu's excesses was his ruinous pace of repayment of the foreign debt to Western banks. He even forced Romania to exceed the payment schedule!

Ceaucescu ordered that basic foodstuffs, fuel, and other domestic necessities be withheld from Romanian consumption and sold on the foreign market to pay back the debt. Even before this, Romania supported the lowest standard of living in Eastern Europe and has the only Warsaw Pact standard of living lower than the Soviet Union's.

Perhaps Causescu's reconstruction of more than 33 of Romania's cities most visibly illustrates the bankruptcy of the policy of "the architect of our grandiose times."

The modern facades of new residential blocks lining grandiose boulevards concealed what was a step backward, as many individual units shared only one kitchen and one bath per floor. Whole neighborhoods and districts were obliterated and reorganized for more efficient administrative control.

Thousands were dislocated in the capital, Bucharest, once known as the "Paris of the Balkans." Monumental boulevards were cut through the city, destroying whole historic districts. Causescu acknowledged his debt to French Emperor Napoleon III, whose purpose was not only to have imperial aggrandisement but also to be better able to put 4t. thes Nicolai Ceausescu down urban revolt.

Causescu's attempt to visit a similar fate onto the rural villages directly contributed to the revolt by the Hungarian minority in the western part of the country. The plan called for razing 8000 of the nation's 13,000 rural villages, moving the inhabitants into agroindustrial centers with massive housing blocks.

The main excuse for this project was the "rational" development of agriculture. In the regime's view, the plan had the benefit of breaking up village, family, and nationality ties to the land and reassigning the inhabitants throughout the country.

Causescu's rise to power Ceausescu/joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s. The CP had been severely weakened by Stalin's transformation of it into an external tool of Soviet foreign policy. Romanians viewed it as a foreign instrument.

Under pressure of the Germans, in 1941, the fascist regime in Romania attacked the Soviet Union. After Germany's defeat, the least-tainted nationalists were drawn into a coalition government with the Communist Party under Red Army domination.

After Stalin scrapped the coalition with the nationalists, the CP dominated the regime. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej established his regime firmly by 1952 and began making the party and Romania more an nore independent from the Soviet Union As Causescu established control between 1965 and 1968, he deepened the general course of independence from Moscow, whil denouncing Gheorghiu and posturing agains his more onerous aspects. Ceausescu was given unprecedented power to resist the conservative holdovers. Much like Gorbachev today, Ceausescu played the role of the young, able reformer.

After 1968, Ceausescu received an overwhelming vote of confidence when he refused Romanian participation in crushing the democracy movement in Czechoslovakia.

Internationally, Causescu was praised by the West. Nixon granted favorable trade status. Ford and Carter continued the policy, ignoring the growing severity of human rights abuses because of the anti-Soviet "benefits." Reagan continued favorable status until the new possibilities under Gorbachev and changes in Eastern Europe ended Ceausescu's usefulness to U.S. policy.

Mikhail Gorbachev at the beginning of the 1990s cuts a strikingly similar profile to Nicolae Causescu in the late 1960s. Gorbachev has been accorded unprecedented powers, as was Ceausescu. The Romanian has been called the last Stalin-like CP head; but without terminating Stalinism, could forces in the USSR cause Gorbachev to end up equally as repressive?