Yet this man,
as Funderburk wrote, was able to “erase the past and construct a new man and
society dependent upon the Communist Party and its organs of terror and
intimidation.” People were kept under
the heavy boot of oppression because they were hungry, cold, controlled by abject
fear, disarmed, and starved into submission by a huge army of Marxist cadre and
well-armed militias and soldiers, composed of brothers, fathers, neighbors, and
friends.
A few
citizens in the more sparsely populated areas in the Carpathian Mountains, hid in
the woods and kept their weapons, in opposition to the communists, but they
were eventually rounded up and killed.
There was no
place to hide from the well-paid informants of the Communist Party; often
snitches were their own awfully close relatives, distant relatives, and even “best”
friends turned informants, not because they believed in such an oppressive
ideology, but because they wanted more food, medicine, medical care, and other scarce
survival items.
Communist propaganda
played each day on radio, television, political meetings, children’s shows, schools,
and printed in newspapers, magazines, and on glossy posters. The music accompanying
the daily propaganda was martial, somber, frightening, and deafening.
The Dear
Leader was spoken of in biblical terms, he was the “creator of thought,” the “giver
of strength,” and, in a Ministry of Truth Orwellian vein, he was the One who gave
meaning and justification to our thoughts and ideas. Without him, a God-like
figure, we were worth nothing, we were dust under his shoes.
We owned
nothing in that miserable life, but we were NOT happy about it, just controlled
into submission by fear and indoctrination. And it showed! You would have been
hard-pressed to meet one smiling person on the street. Everybody frowned and
crowded in never-ending store lines, on buses, and on trains, like sardines in
a can. The evil and guilty, being driven around in fancy government-owned cars,
controlled the good and the innocent.
Ceausescu
was compared by his apparatchiks, poets, teachers, movie makers, writers, reporters,
to famous historical figures like Stefan Cel Mare (Stephen the Great), Vlad
Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), the bloody thirsty prince from the mid-1400s who
disposed of his enemies through strange methods of incarceration, torture, savage
beatings, or summary and quite painful executions.
Ceausescu
was, according to posters and recitations we had to make daily in meetings at
school and work, the framer of the “multilaterally developed socialist society
and Romania’s advance to communism.” All we knew was the reality of gurgling
empty tummies, bare pantries, and headaches from insufficient daily intake of
calories.
Ceausescu was
aggrandized to the point that he was featured in every classroom, every office,
every workshop, every factory, inside public buildings, outside buildings, in
sculptures, portraits, military decorations, churches, icons, paintings,
banners, statues, monuments, poems, plays, and monologues. Nothing happened in
Romania without his approval. His elaborate portrait was next to those of
ancient kings, princes, and voivodes.
On national
holidays such as August 23, celebrating the victory over fascism, or the
anniversary of the union of Transylvania with the rest of Romania, we had to
march on the main boulevard, dressed in our pioneers’ uniform with the red
bandana around the neck, carrying flags, placards with phrases like ‘Long
live communism,’ and portraits of the Dear Leader; but it was not a real celebration
for that occasion, it was a total deification of the tyrant, “the father of the
country,” “the light of knowledge and wisdom,” and many other absurd and
outlandish phrases invented by communists to venerate the cobbler dictator and
his semi-literate wife who “owned” a scientific doctoral degree she never
earned.
We lived in
an alternate universe, The Twilight Zone of sorts, where bad people were in
charge and good people were slaves to communism, to the Dear Leader and his family,
who lived in the lap of luxury in exorbitant villas thanks to confiscatory
stealing from citizens and the theft of the national patrimony and impoverishment
of the country. His foreign bank accounts held millions of dollars while the oppressed
masses starved.
During
plenary meetings, worshipping party members and those in attendance stood up
every two or three minutes, clapping and shouting praises for the glorification
of the dictator Ceausescu. While it was standard protocol to stand during the
entrance of a country’s leader, U.S. Ambassador David Funderburk refused to
stand as often after the initial standing at his entrance, and was, according
to his recollection, blacklisted.
The
worshipping went so far that, on his 67th birthday, Ceausescu was
compared to Orion (“Luceafarul”), born at Scornicesti, “Nicolae with a laurel
crown.” Imagine the nausea of having to take part in such surreal events.
Nobody dared
to mention God on Romanian television, because, to the communists, atheism was
their religion and Ceausescu was god. The word God had not been mentioned in
the media after the Bolsheviks took over the country.
But one man,
Ambassador David B. Funderburk, dared to use the word God in his July 4, 1982,
television address to the Romanian people. Ambassador Funderburk recounts in
his book, that month’s later church goers in the far north told him how dear and
meaningful the word God was to them, knowing that it came from the President of
the United States at the time, Ronald Reagan. . .... “Let us pray that God will
guide us and future generations in preserving the liberty that is the essence
of the American spirit.” (David B. Funderburk, Pinstripes and Reds, Selous
Foundation Press, 1987, p. 107)
Ceausescu
had an army of controllers on the Communist Party payroll, i.e., the dreaded
Securitate, the economic police, the street police, factory activists, school
activists, and informants on every city block, street, apartment complex, and
each entrance to the many public buildings, churches, schools, hospitals, factories,
and libraries.
Nothing was
left to chance and everything and everybody was constantly watched. His army
worked hard to track the rest of us because they had low level technology, no
Internet, computers, and smart phones.
Doctors and
nurses were ardent supporters of the police state and highly compliant.
Teachers followed the directives of the Ministry of Education. Fear and extra
pay to help one survive were strong motivators.
We could not
turn to churches for comfort because most priests were also informants to the
Securitate and were on Ceausescu’s payroll. They helped keep the praying masses
subdued and under control. Churches were kept open for baptisms, weddings, and
burials and as a way for Ceausescu to know when the small underground
opposition organized events.
