INSIDE: Interview with Romanian Rent workęhe seTup I Student rally underscores

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SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1990 9 Why do so many leading figures in the Front have ties to the old Causescu government?

Many of the Front's actions are also viewed with open suspicion. These include the decree demanding all arms be turned over to the army, the speedy outlawing of the death penalty before those who have ordered and carried out the most terrible atrocities have even been tried, and the Front's constant wavering on popular demands calling for outlawing the Stalinized Communist Party.

Setting up new unions In every factory I visited, workers were deeply involved in the first steps of setting up new democratic unions. Initially this was happening on a very local level, in individual departments and work sections. There was intense interest in the question of democracy and how democratic control over the new unions could be assured.

During my interviews I made the point that the Western press and Western govern•political revolution in Romania

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(continued from page 9: “SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT Eyewitness to the unfolding political revolution in Romania”) vealed that Ceausescu also maintained "41 residential villas" and 20 hunting lodges for himself. These, too, were confiscated and are now "the property of the Romanian people and state, "he said.

Meanwhile the standard of living of most Romanians has been ruthlessly driven down over the last 10 years by Causescu's drastic austerity program. Wages, medical care, and social programs were severely cut. Even the consumption of basic foods was severely reduced through Causescu's euphemistically entitled "Scientific Feeding Program."

Paying back the IMF The purpose of Causescu's austerity pro. gram was to generate hard currency with which to continue payment on Romania's Lynn Henderson/Sociallst Action $11 billion debt to the imperialist-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other such lending institutions.

Ceausescu's austerity program won him praise and support throughout the West. President Richard Nixon courted him as a mediator. Queen Elizabeth II awarded him an honorary Knighthood and put him up in Buckingham Palace. Rosalyn and President Carter entertained him, and Romania was granted "most favored nation" trade status by the United States, the only Warsaw Pact country to be so treated.

Indeed, up until just recently, Causescu was portrayed throughout the West as a "reformer," a kind of early Gorbachev. And his austerity program is strikingly similar to the austerity programs being projected throughout Eastern Europe by the newly formed coalition governments which include "reformed" Communist Parties.

In Poland and Hungary these austerity programs have actually begun to be implemented, with the resulting appearance of unemployment and Depression-style soup kitchens in Warsaw and Budapest.

However, in Romania today, the situation is qualitatively different. The revolutionary explosion that occurred there contains elements that frighten both the Gorbachev Stalinists and Western imperialism.

The complete sweeping away of the Communist Party apparatus in an armed revolutionary uprising, the inability of the Gorbachev "reformers" to quickly re-establish control over the situation, and the unlikelihood that Romanian workers-arms in hand—will peacefully submit to further austerity measures are not examples that either Western imperialism or the new "reformed" Gorbachev Stalinists want to see spread.

At one point, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker even went so far as to publicly suggest to Gorbachev that the Soviet Union consider sending troops in to aid the provisional government of still-tainted Stalinists.

Neighboring Yugoslavian Stalinists also got the message quickly. After watching round-the-clock TV broadcasts from Romania in which a formerly docile working class rose up, executed a dictator, and jailed other top communist leaders, a high party official was moved to say in the New York Times: "Romania was the turning point are old people with old conceptions. We are