William Tyler
Romania: Dictatorship, Marxism and Democracy

William Tyler - Romania: Dictatorship, Marxism and Democracy

- Let me begin with World War I and begin by saying the consequences pursuant on the conflict in World War I have sent their ripples down to the present day, not only in Europe, of course, but also beyond in the Middle East. Romania was a net gainer from the first World War, not least due to the efforts, as we saw last time, of the British-born Queen Marie of Romania. Indeed, Romania gained a great amount of territory in the peace settlements in Paris. The gain was 156,000 square kilometres of land, and a staggering 8.5 million additional citizens. As Keith Hitchins, in his Concise History of Romania writes, he says this. By the fall of 1920, all Romania’s territorial acquisitions had received international sanction. They added 156,000 square kilometres. Now, Romania was 296,000 square kilometres, and it added 8.5 million inhabitants to the pre-War kingdom so that the new Romania was 16-and-a-quarter million people. Because of the growth in size, both in land and population, it became referred to in the interwar years as Greater Romania. Those of you who are familiar with the history of Eastern Europe remember that Hungary is still, as it were, campaigning for a Greater Hungary. It feels, it’s not going to get it, but it feels done down by the first World War, not having a Greater Hungary. Of course, there was a Greater Serbia, which became, of course, Yugoslavia. There always seems to be a greater something, and a greater Greece, which finally seems to have settled with the settlement of the recognition of North Macedonia as a separate state. All of these things came out of the first World War.

Romania was the net gainer, so it is Greater Romania, that is, he referred to. This had an additional effect, not only increasing population and land, but the population itself meant that Romania had far more different and bearing ethnicities than it had had before, and it also meant that it was able to have greater industrial potential than it had before. So, in a sense, greater Romania was a story of swings and roundabouts. A new constitution was promulgated in 1923, a democratic constitution with a constitutional monarch, King Ferdinand, who is still, in 1918, in good or reasonable health. Indeed, Romania remained a constitutional monarchy. The king, however, Ferdinand, died in 1927, and his grandson, Michael, who was age only six, succeeded him as king, well, of course, with a Council of Regency to support him. Michael’s father, Carol, was still alive, but he had renounced his claim to the throne two years earlier in 1925. He lived the life, I think it would be fair to say, of an international playboy, but, there’s a lot of buts in the Romanian story today, but Michael only reigned, or at least his regents only reigned in his name, for a period of three years. There was a coup following the inefficiencies as were seen by the regents in governing the country. A coup happened, and Carol, although he’d renounced the throne, was invited back and accepted coming back. And Carol II was to reign for the decade 1930 to 1940, that extraordinary decade in European history that led to the growth in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe are forms of fascism, not just Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, but Franco’s Spain and, indeed, you can make the case for Hungary as well. But Romania also falls into this right wing political movement of fascism across Europe.

And we will see more of that in a moment. And I’ll try and explain how Romania differs from the other countries. But before we reach the 1930s, I should say a quick word about the 1920s and the politics of the 1920s, when Romania was following a democratic path. You couldn’t call it full democracy, but it is set on a democratic path that, in the course of time, would lead it to become a full democracy. And Hitchins writes of this in such a way. The critical issue of the day in the 1920s in politics was the survival of parliamentary democracy in the face of severe challenges from the forces of authoritarianism, i.e. fascism, in Romania’s case, the prospects for democracy seemed auspicious, however, in the 1920s, as the two leading political parties, the National Liberal and the National Peasant Parties, both committed themselves to parliamentary government, all seemed set on course. That is not to be, however, the end of the pre-War, pre-second World War story in Romania. So, Carol comes back as king in June, 1930. He was the first of the German kings to be born in Romania. He spoke Romanian, and he was raised not in the Catholic faith, but in the Orthodox Eastern faith, in the Orthodox Eastern Christianity. But as I’ve said just now, he was not really cut out for the role of a constitutional monarch. He had been accused of deserting the army in the first World War, and he’d entered a marriage to, what was considered at the time, an unsuitable woman. She was a commoner, and she was called Zizi Lambrino. Maybe not a good idea to be called Zizi. Had she had a more, what shall we say, a more acceptable name, like Helen, then she might have been better accepted in Romania, but the marriage only lasted less than a year, between 1918 and 1919.

He then did marry more suitably, and he did marry a Helen, Princess Helen of Greece and Denmark. But by the time that Carol II became king in 1930, that marriage had also hit the rocks, and they were divorced in 1928. From that moment on, he lived the rest of his life with his mistress, Magda Lupescu, whom he eventually married when in exile in 1947. She was an interesting woman in so many ways and notorious in the 1930s. Her father, Nicolae Lupescu, was an apothecary, a pharmacist, a chemist. Her mother was an Austrian-born Jew, who had converted to Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, prior to her marriage, whereas Nicolae was also Jewish but had changed his name, and there’s a lot of confusion over what his original name was, had changed his name on being converted to Orthodox Christianity. So, we have this bizarre situation of a Romanian-Jewish father, an Austrian-Jewish mother with the mother converting to Roman Catholicism, and the father converting to Eastern Orthodoxy. She divided opinion. She’s the sort of person I think I would like to have met, really, to make my own mind up. She was said by some to be outspoken, as she certainly was. She was striking in appearance. She was tall for a woman of the time. She had red hair and, apparently, milky white skin and green eyes. Wow, you couldn’t really miss her. Others were less flattering and described her features as coarse, her conversation as vulgar, but there seems to be a common agreement that she walked with a peculiar swing of the hips, which, depending on your point of view, you either found extremely attractive, even sexy, or you found crude and vulgar. She divided opinion, but worse than that, she was deeply involved with the corruption of Carol II’s regime in Romania.

The word corruption and Romania have, sadly, continued to go on side by side, but she was a bad example of corruption. They were finally married after they had gone into exile in June, 1947. They were married in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, which they had arrived at three years prior. There is a description of them from the time that they had arrived at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio with 40 trunks, 67 suitcases, two cars, six dogs, and a vast amount of jewellery, including two gold crowns studded with gems. I mean, it’s just the sort of thing we all take on our annual holiday. It’s amazing. 40 trunks, 67 suitcases, two cars, six dogs, and vast quantities of jewellery, including two golden crowns. They mixed with the high society of Brazil. They had managed to get, really, all their money and jewellery out of Romania, so let’s return to Carol taking the throne from June, 1930 to 1940. So, what of that tumultuous decade of the thirties as it hit Romania? Carol’s reign began inauspiciously through no fault of his, because of the economic crisis caused by the wider world’s Great Depression. And, in truth, Romania was not in a good position, economically, to withstand the storms. It was backward in terms of Western Europe, and it was to remain backward until right through, until post-communism. Carol, though, made matters worse by weakening rather than strengthening Romania’s infant, shall we say, democracy. And he did so by interfering in the party system, not standing aside like a British monarch, but interfering as though he was more president than a constitutional monarch. This taking a greater role, together with his mistress’s corruption, did not lead to a happy political state or a situation in which the democracy enjoyed under his father, Ferdinand, would improve, as it were, year on year. In 1937, matters came to a head.

There was a general election in December of that year when, for the first time since Carol had taken the throne, there was no single majority party, no party without majority large enough to take part singly, and thus there would have to be a coalition government. But that proved impossible to continue with. And this gave Carol the opportunity of taking more power to himself in what historians now describe as a royal dictatorship. The date, 1938. And it was a dictatorship. He abolished the Democratic constitution that had been introduced after the first World War in 1923. He abolished political parties, and in their place, set up a group of, what shall I say, willing politicians, amenable politicians to him, under the heading of the National Renaissance Front. Well, it was a front. It had pretence to be a political party, but it isn’t really, and it is at this point in Romania’s story that the story becomes somewhat, shall I say, byzantine. So let me try and explain this as clearly as I can. You could describe and analyse Carol II’s rule from 1938 onwards, as many historians do, as a royal dictatorship. And you could analyse it in terms of fascism. But his attempt to establish one group, I hesitate to use the word political party, the National Renaissance Front, and for him to rule more as a dictator than a constitutional king was taken by him, in part, to counteract the fascism of a group called the Iron Guard that had been founded back in the 1920s, and which was now gaining greater popular support as fascism increases across Europe, as I said a moment or two ago.

So, this is really rather strange, is it not? We have here a situation where a government is in power, which historians today and, indeed, contemporary politicians outside of Eastern Europe would have described as fascist, established in order to stop fascism. Now today, the word fascist is bandied about politically without, really, much thought to it. And many of you know, certainly those of you who’ve studied history, that we always have to distinguish between German Nazism and, shall we say, Franco-Mussolini’s fascism. And fascism is difficult to define. It’s difficult to pin down, except, well, it’s rather like a camel. We can’t describe it, but we know a camel when we see one. And so, it was with Carol II’s Romania. We can see it’s fascist, but he is seeing it as a barrier to a, or perhaps he would have. I don’t know; he wouldn’t have described it in that way, but we could describe it as a worse form, a further-trip-to-the-right of fascism with the Iron Guard. Before I leave Carol and Madam Lupescu, let me just finish off with a quotation about each. Thank you very much, Elliot, for sending me this limerick by email. I promised I’d read it out, so I am, and I think we agreed, did we not, 20 American dollars, yes? But nevermind, the Limerick goes like this. Have you heard about Magda Lupescu, who came to Romania’s rescue? It’s a wonderful thing to be under a king. Is democracy better?

I ask you. I think that’s very good. And I have to say, I hadn’t heard, maybe everyone else has heard it; I hadn’t. Let me just read it again. Have you heard about Magda Lupescu, who came to Romania’s rescue? It’s a wonderful thing to be under a king. Is democracy better? I ask you. And the following is a one-sentence conclusion on Carol II himself. It’s written by the American historian, Stanley Payne, in a book on the history of fascism dated 1914 to 1945. And Stanley Payne writes, Carol was the most cynical, corrupt, and power-hungry monarch, who ever disgraced the throne anywhere in 20th-century Europe. Well, wow, that’s saying something. And maybe, if you had to do essays, that would be the essay I would give you. How accurate is this description? The most cynical, corrupt, and power-hungry monarch, who ever disgraced the throne anywhere in 20th-century Europe. So, I’ve said that one of the reasons that Carol moved into this royal dictatorship was to counter the fascist group, the Iron Guard. Now, as I also mentioned, the Iron Guard was established back in the 1920s. It was strongly anti-democratic. It was, interestingly, anti-capitalist, but it was also anti-communist and, all of you will know, deeply anti-Semitic. All these fascist movements in the 1930s across Europe differed one from another. I’ve mentioned Germany differing from Spain and Italy, but Spain and Italy also differed from each other. It’s a cruel terminology, this fascist terminology, but its stuck, and we are stuck with it. So, why and how was the Iron Guard of Romania significantly different? And that was because it had a religious base. Now, you don’t have to have a religious base to be anti-Semitic, think Nazism. But this had a religious base to its anti-Semitism and a religious base to its nationalism, the base being the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Now, one of the differences between Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholic or Protestant Christianity is that Orthodox Christianity has a mysticism element. Think only of Czarist Russia and Rasputin to gain that sort of idea and, indeed, Nicholas II’s wife, Czarina Alexandra, the Czarina sought mystical support for her views. The man who was the leader of the Iron Guard, a man called Codreanu, was especially different from other people. He became, definitely, a sort of religious mystic. He is a strange, strange figure. And through the Iron Guard, he had the same goals as he had spiritually. In other words, his spiritual mysticism goals were also his political. And he said his final aim was spiritual and transcendental, a quote from Codreanu himself, the spiritual resurrection, the resurrection of nations in the name of Jesus Christ. Now, the nearest examples we could cite today would be fundamentalist Islam and a state like Iran. That is what he was seeking to achieve, a fascist Christian state. It all sounds quite weird, and I think, indeed, it was weird, hence why Carol was trying desperately to keep them from power. By the end of the 1930s, the Iron Guard became the third largest fascist movement in Europe, after Germany and after Italy. And it’s strange because Romania had won, as we saw right at the beginning of my talk, land and people at the end of the first World War, unlike Germany and Hungary, for example, and Italy, that had lost land. So sorry, not Italy.

Hungary and Germany that had lost land. But it embraced fascism and nationalism even though it had more ethnicities in it post-1920 than it had had pre-1914. It was economically backward and was slipping further backwards vis-a-vis Western Europe by the year. The country was faced with the challenge of building this new Greater Romania and this multi-ethnic nation into a democratic political system, but as we saw, Carol II gave up on that. And although, well, some people would argue he wasn’t fascist, well, whatever he was, the Iron Guard saw him as opening the door to their form of nationalism, which was distinctly fascist in form, with this extraordinary religious bit tacked on, if you like. They went to the peasants for peasant nationalism and peasant nationalist support, and Codreanu used to visit peasant villages, dressed in a white robe, riding a white horse, creating this religious figure rather than a political figure. And all his meetings started with a religious service before he, as it were, sashayed into the politics. So all of this is bubbling away in Romania, and I think you might well say Romania was in a state by 1940. I mentioned Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy, and I do read that, and it gives you this idea of things bubbling away. In 1940, Carol II became more than anxious about the growing part of the Iron Guard, and he named Jim, or later Marshall, Ion Antonescu, Ion Antonescu, as prime minister, and he appointed him prime minister because Antonescu, though not a member of the Iron Guard, had close associations with it. And Carol thought that, by doing that, he could, through Antonescu, control the Iron Guard. Wrong.

Antonescu, before he became prime minister, unknown to the king, had secretly reached an agreement with other political figures, including the Iron Guard, to force Carol out. Carol’s position became increasingly untenable, and he was forced by Antonescu to advocate in favour of his son, Michael, who now came back to the throne in 1940. Michael had no option but to confirm Antonescu’s dictatorial powers. He’s now more than a prime minister. And Michael is simply a figure, a head, not really power. In fact, he gave Antonescu the title of Conducator. Remember, Mussolini’s title, Il Duce, and Hitler’s title, the Fuhrer. And so, King Michael, ascending the throne for a second time in 1940, it’s really a figure like Victor Emmanuel of Italy and his relationship with Mussolini. So is Antonescu’s relationship with King Michael. Antonescu is no Democrat. He’s authoritarian in a very distinctive way, and he’s also an arch nationalist. In fact, you could describe him, and he has been described, as an ultranationalist as well as an ultraauthoritarian. He formed an alliance with the Iron Guard in an attempt, like Carol’s before him, to control it. Now, it’s at this point I need to make a further issue about fascism. If you were doing a course on fascism for a term as a postgraduate course, I might give you Romania as a subject to investigate as you try to tease out the elements of fascism. And I’d ask you to look at Carol II’s royal dictatorship in the terms of fascism.

I would ask you to look at the Iron Guard’s very distinctive form of fascism. But I should also like you to look at Antonescu’s form of fascist dictatorship. Fascism is not a straightforward concept, and today, as I said before, it’s used to, well, it’s used as a smear very often. The two right wing parties, although I do not deny that there are fascists within Western Europe, you only need to look at the nationalist policies of parties in both Germany and France to clearly see that. But the word fascist needs careful delineation. Antonescu wants to get rid of the Iron Guard, but he can’t do so. But in 1941, the war is still on, of course. He approaches Hitler and gets Hitler’s support to use the Romanian army and the German army that’s in Romania to crush the Iron Guard. Now, just remember, the Iron Guard, in history books, is said to be the fascist movement of Romania, but here’s Antonescu gaining Hitler’s agreement to crush it. A good example of why you can say that Antonescu himself is fascist, and they attempted to crush it, as I say, with the soldiers, with Romanian soldiers, German soldiers, and a three-day civil war in Romania takes place, there’s no doubt about the outcome. Antonescu has the military force. The Iron Guard do not, and they are crushed, many of them escaping. One historian has written the following. During this crisis, members of the Iron Guard instigated a deadly pogrom in Bucharest. Particularly gruesome was the murder of dozens of Jewish citizens in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. The perpetrators hanged the Jews from meat hooks. Remember Hitler’s use of meat hooks in the July plotter, for the July plotters.

Then they mutilated and killed them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practises. The American ambassador to Romania, Franklin Gunther, who went and saw the slaughterhouse where the Jews had been slaughtered, he saw placards which had been put around the necks of the Jews, which simply read kosher meat. He reported all this back to Washington, and he said 60 Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for meat carcasses. They were all skinned, and the quantity of blood about was evidence that they’d been skinned alive. Gunther said the thing that had upset him the most of what he saw, a five-year-old Jewish girl hanging from one of the meat hooks. Now, the people responsible fled Romania. And this is another odd twist to the story. They fled Romania and were given sanctuary by Hitler. But Hitler had been involved in suppressing them, but they’re given sanctuary by him. History is often, the facts of history, are often more puzzling than fiction. The Iron Guard, it is alleged, core, killed, sorry, killed 125 Jews during these three days. And 30 German and Romanian soldiers also died. 9,000 Iron Guard members were imprisoned in Romania by Antonescu. But do not, do not assume that Antonescu was in any way less anti-Semitic than the Iron Guard.

His views were the same, not fueled by religion, but the outcome was exactly the same. Fascism, whether Antonescu-style or Iron-Guard-style. Let me pause at that point and return to a topic that we touched on tangentially so far. And that is the second World War. Romania did not enter the War in 1939, declaring neutrality, but when France fell in 1940, and there was a strong possibility that Britain would follow likewise, after the retreat from Dunkirk, Antonescu begins to lean towards Germany and the Axis countries. And then, there was a problem. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Russia and Germany to allow both of them to carve up Poland also promised, that is to say, Germany promised Romanian territory to Russia. It was that moment that Carol II was overturned in the coup d'etat of 1940, when Ionescu first became the new dictator. But by November, 1940, Antonescu has taken Romania out of neutrality and onto the side of Germany. He’s banking on being able to change the German view, and he regards Russia, very close, indeed, as a greater threat. And, of course, Russia is Marxist, and he’s fascist and all of that. And so, in November, 1940, Romania joins the Axis. Indeed, in Operation Barbarossa, in June, 1941 when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is ripped up by Hitler and German forces invade Russia, Romanian forces go with them.

They provided equipment, soldiers and, important, they, if we were face-to-face, I’d ask you this, what other thing? Oil. Oil. Germany needs Romania’s oil. It has no oil of its own. Romania’s troops, committed to the war in Russia, are actually greater in number than any other ally supplied to Germany. They played a large role in this Eastern Front that Germany has opened up in June of 1941. And now, we return to the anti-Semitism of Antonescu and his government. Romanian forces played a large role during fighting in Ukraine, Bessarabia. In Stalingrad, in Russia itself, combined. They were responsible for persecution and the massacre of over quarter of a million Jews in the territory that they now controlled, that the Romanian army controlled. Trudy is talking about Romanian Jews because there’s another side to the story. The Jews in Romania itself were less persecuted. But persecution was persecution. There’s a new book come out talking about the fact that anti-Semitism and the Holocaust was not simply down to ethnic Germans, but, indeed, to whole ranges of people on the Axis and non-Axis side. Think of Russia itself, and think of Romania. But the War, as we all know, turned against Hitler. And by 1943 onwards, the Allies were bombing Romania. There are German soldiers there. Not only were the Western Allies bombing Romania, but the Red Army was advancing from Russia southwards towards Romania, and actually reached Romania in 1944. Support for Antonescu’s stand with Germany, the popular support was now, well, very obviously, failing. They’re fearful, as many Eastern European countries were, of the advance of the Red Army.

The German front, that is to say the German-Romanian front, was collapsing in the face of the Red Army’s progress southwards. King Michael, still there, although a puppet, now decides not to become a puppet. And negotiating with politicians anti-Antonescu launches a coup in August, 1944, and overthrows Antonescu. He then puts Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of the War. And in 1946, Antonescu himself is executed. A bit late, you might say, to join the Allies. Well, in truth, it was only at that point that Michael was able to act and politicians against Antonescu were able to act, but the Allies weren’t having any of it. There was no return to the Greater Romania of the inter-War years, although they did recover the part of Transylvania that they’d lost. That is to say, Northern Transylvania, which they’d lost to Hungary. That was returned to them. And thus, the Romania that emerges from World War II is that core state we talked about last time, of Transylvania, which had been, before the First War, Austria and the two Ottoman provinces, of Wallachia, and I’ll get this right this week, Moldavia. That is the new Romania. Interestingly, the Romanians have not worried like the Hungarians about the loss of Greater Romania. They seem more satisfied that the Romania of today is more homogeneous, in terms of ethnicity, and in terms of religion, and in terms of language. 83, these are latest figures from the 21st century, 83.4% are Romanians, ethnically. 85.4% speak Romanian as their first language. And 81.9% are members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

It seems to be this sense of nationality and their experience of the multiethnic Romania, which clearly didn’t work. Moreover, all the arguments that we’ve seen over the last week or from the 19th century onwards, which bit is my bit? Can I have this bit. All these arguments over land are finished. Romania has no quarrel with its neighbours over land. And that is something to say in terms of the Balkans in the 20th, late 20th, and 21st centuries. It has come to terms with it. I’m using a book. I’ve put a book list on my blog, and this is one of the books by Keith Lowe called Savage Continent. It’s the story of Europe in the aftermath of World War II. It is a brilliant book in my opinion. Chapter 25 is called Cuckoo in the Nest: Communism in Romania, and he writes this. The communists in Eastern Europe displayed a ruthlessness in their pursuit of power that made the Western government seem like fumbling amateurs. Any of the dozen or so nations that fell behind Churchill’s Iron Curtain might serve as a demonstration of this. But perhaps the best example is that of Romania because the communist takeover here was particularly rapid and particularly vicious. He goes on to write, Romania was one of the few Eastern European countries that had remained relatively untouched by the Second World War. Parts of it had been bombed by the Allies, and the northwest had been ravaged by the approach of the Red Army. But in contrast of Poland, Yugoslavia, and East Germany, where the traditional power structures were almost entirely swept away, Romanian institutions remain largely intact.

For the communists to seize absolute power here, therefore, there’s not simply a matter of imposing a new system upon a blank slate. The old system had first to be dismantled. The brutal and menacing way in which the traditional Romanian institutions were liquidated and replaced is a masterclass in totalitarian methods. Wow, whoa. That’s putting it clearly. So what exactly, then, are we looking at? On the 6th of March, 1945, after mass demonstrations by communist sympathisers and political pressure from the Soviets who are representing the Allies, America, France, and Britain, by the Soviets, and the Soviets can put pressure on because the Red Army is in Romania and is to remain at Romania until 1958. And what the Romanians do not want to happen is that Russia will incorporate Romania within a greater Russia. There is a further period of political confusion in the aftermath of the War. But by 1947, King Michael was forced to abdicate, and the People’s Republic of Romania, the communist Romania, was declared. In fact, Michael’s position had long been an intolerable one since 1945. Romania’s now communist government, it had been part of earlier governments from 1945 to 1947. And in a traditional, in a normal classic way, shall we say, in a classic way, but communism, it begins to infiltrate Democratic governments, take over socialist parties, and eventually emerge unchallenged, which it did in 1947. Romania’s government began to assert its independence from Moscow. Now, this is quite interesting. You can compare it, if you like, with Tito’s Yugoslavia, but they did it very early. They are fearful of Russia taking them over.

And it is through pressure from the Romanian government that the Red Army was finally withdrawn in 1958. But don’t think this is anything odd about Russia. After all, the American army and the British army, the American army in Germany and the British army on the Rhine were there for decades. In fact, the Americans are still there. From the 1950s to the 1970s, there was economic progress. Marxism had found a totally failing capitalist economic system, not helped by the war, and was able to show progress and growth. Romania’s story in the fifties to the mid-sixties reminds us that Eastern European communism is not monochrome. Yugoslavia is not Albania. Romania is not Hungary. The stories differ. And the important point of Romania is it managed to do two things. It managed, really, to push Russia away. You can say Tito did that, yes, but it managed to do so while keeping hold of a strong, we would say horrendous, Marxist government. The first 20 years or so were communist party in power was riven by division, by factions, all competing for dominance. And this is, again, a well-documented example of Marxism in the post-War era when the polit bureaus of this country were all angling, and individuals within them angling, for greater power. This is brought to a close in 1965, when hitherto rather obscure communists, that is to say, Nicolae Ceausescu, becomes the leader of Romania and is to remain so right through until the end of communist Romania in 1989. And he and his wife, Elena, are really something else.

Yet, in his early years, in the late sixties, he was genuinely popular. Why? Because things were still improving. Agriculture was being modernised. Consumer goods even began to appear, and there was a cultural thaw, allowing music and art. And he was even lauded in the West because, in 1968, during the Prague Spring, he publicly spoke out against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. But that popularity, both at home and abroad, were short-lived. And the regime from, shall we say 1970 through to its end in 1981, is vicious and nasty and brutal. There were lots of examples you can give, but in an hour, I don’t have time, and it seemed pointless to do headings because the greatest scandal was that of the orphanages. And The Guardian had an article about this in 2019, and I can do no better than read part of that article from the English newspaper, The Guardian. Today in Romania, orphanages are a particularly sensitive point with many Romanians feeling that the wide publicity for the footage, on TV and so on, and subsequent massive global adoption campaign is a stain on the country’s reputation that is best forgotten. The country’s orphanages began to fill up from the late 1960s, early 1970s when the state decided to battle a demographic crisis by banning abortion and removing contraception from sale. Many of those in the orphanages were not actually orphans, but those whose parents felt they couldn’t cope financially with raising a family.

The most horrific abuse took place in homes for disabled children who were taken away from their families and institutionalised at the age of three. Disabled children will be sorted by hospital commissions into three categories: curable, partially curable, and incurable. The children who were described as incurable, some of whom had only minor or no, even no, disabilities were subjected to particularly brutal conditions. Across the country, there were 26 such institutions catering for incurable children. There has been an institute set up in Romania now, which has been, and is still, investigating. They picked three of the 26 to investigate in-depth and found shocking mortality rates amongst the children. They didn’t die from any disabilities they might have. 70% died from pneumonia, and others died from illnesses that were entirely medically treatable. The investigators have found even more horrific details. There is testimony given to them of children suffering from frostbite inside the homes and have children literally being eaten by rats, being kept in cages, or being smeared in their own faeces. The investigators logged 771 deaths they believed to have been, could have been prevented in just three facilities. And just in the 1980s. The institute’s also been gathering names of those who worked in those institutions, employees directly responsible for the abuse, and functionaries higher up in the communist system. It’s one of the most appalling stories in Europe in the 20th century of the treatment of children. In the end, well, the end comes quickly.

You may all remember that rioting broke out in the Romanian city of Timisoara and then spread. And it spread to Bucharest. And on the 21st of December, 1989, Ceausescu, supported by his wife, on the balcony of a government building in Bucharest, spoke to the rioting crowd. They booed him down. He flees, is captured, and on Christmas Day, 1989, he’s tried and executed. And the outcome of the trial was determined in advance. He was to be found guilty. There were lots of charges, but the main charge was genocide, murdering over 60,000 people during the revolution in Timisoara. Well, that is not a accurate figure. It’s just a figure plucked out of the air. It may be only about 1,000 people, but it doesn’t matter at this stage. They just want to portray the Ceausescus as animals. To show that they’d already made the decision to shoot them, there was a team of paratroopers selected in advance, who were present at the trial. And during the trial, at one point, the lawyers assigned to the Ceausescus joined the prosecutor and accused their clients of capital crimes, whereas they’ve been employed to defend them. No evidence was offered, although, of course, plenty of evidence could have been achieved, but this was going to be done quickly. They would have said, I think, efficiently. Ceausescu himself refused to recognise the court that was condemning him and his wife. He was put up against a wall with her outside Bucharest and shot. It is said that 120 bullets were found in the two bodies. He died singing The Internationale. She died shouting, “You sons of bitches.”

Since the fourth communism, only a handful of Romanians have faced legal punishment for their roles in their regime. And so far, there have been no criminal cases over the tens of thousands of children mistreated in the orphanages. It is true that prosecutors are investigating people to bring to court for the ill treatment of the children. And the last official word from those inspecting and appointed to inspect and investigate, the last official word is they hope to bring dozens of people to court for crimes against the children next year in 2024. Post-communist Romania, the country has had a rocky road, both economically and politically, but, a big but here, it has become a member of NATO and of the European Union. And in 1991, it adopted a new democratic constitution. It is back where it had been 100 years ago on a path to greater democracy. I’ve said that they have come to terms with the smaller Romania for the reasons, I think, of linguistic, ethnic, and religious homogeneity. But in terms of corruption, it’s widespread. In terms of democracy, according to the Economists Intelligence Unit, which is regarded internationally as a gold standard for classifying democracies, Romania is classified as a fraud democracy. The democracy index has 60 indicators. A fraud democracy. And so, it is. For those of you who are British and voted for Brexit, this is what worried many of you about the European Union, that countries like Romania, and worse, countries like Hungary remain part of the EU, even though democracy is flawed in Romania and pretty well non-existent in Hungary, and yet, that is a condition of entry and membership of the European Union.

It’s always optimistic to think that things are getting better. The reality, as has been shown by the Ukraine-Russian War, is that that is not a logical view to take of humankind. But as for the future, historians are no better than anyone else at forecasting what will happen in Romania or anywhere else. All any of us can say and do is to watch contemporary events, inform us about the background, aye, that is to say, the history of those events, watch them as they unfold, and pray and hope with optimism that right will prevail, that in Romania’s case, full democracy will come about, greater economic progress will be made, thanks to the European Union, and outside threats will not exist because of its membership of NATO. The future could be very bright for Romania, but it would be unwise to say such things too loudly with too much force in such a short distance of time between 1989 and 2023. Thank you ever so much for listening. Now, do I have any questions? Yes, I do.

Q&A and Comments:

Bessarabia disappeared at the end of World War II.

Q: Was Romania attracted to fascism because of its geographic closeness to Russia, which was then communist?

A: No, it wasn’t. It is the fact that in the inter-War years, sorry, I shouldn’t have been so blunt. In the inter-War years, it is the two competing philosophies of fascism and communism that dominate much of Europe. The democracies, the big democracies, remain only in European terms, France and Britain. And France has its own problems with both communists and fascists. The British experience of fascism was a limited one.

Shelley says the, Duke and Duchess of Windsor travelled around the world in exile with similar baggage. Well, I assume to Carol II and Madam Lupescu, and I think you could use baggage in both senses of the word. I’m asked about Carol II, the political parties Carol II’s rejection. Because they couldn’t agree amongst themselves is basically the answer. And he stepped in, set up this other one, which the liberal party supported and some of the, sorry, some of the Democratic parties supported as the only way forward. They trusted him when others might not have done. They’re frightened of the rise of fascism.

Rita, I can’t tell you. I can’t remember whether we, I thought I’d, I’ve talked about Hannah Arendt and The Origins of Totalitarianism, but it may not have been on lockdown. I can’t remember. Sorry.

Yanna. Yanna says, no, I think I have to say, you know, I can’t agree. Nazism, indeed, had a religious basis itself in a sense akin to the Roman Imperium with the main deity, the emperor himself. No, no, I think that is different. No, Hitler, I don’t think, in any sense, could Hitler be described as religious. This is the promotion of an individual. No, that is not the same as Codreanu. Codreanu had this, you might almost say, Messiah complex, I think. Sorry, I don’t mean always to disagree with people, but you asked my opinion. That’s my opinion. You can hold your opinion. There’s no right that I have to say my opinion is better than yours.

That is a very good point, Judith. As a sidebar, today, an Italian party are taking the Iron Guard as a model as Mussolini’s name is banned in Italy, so nothing new under the sun. There is never anything new under the sun, and that is absolutely true, Judith, and that is what is so frightening about the European, well, the position of liberal democracy in the world today. That is what is frightening about him.

Myrna says, it would seem that the Archbishop of the Russian Church is trying to fashion himself as Putin’s Rasputin. Well, the interesting thing about the Russian patriarch is there’s been reports that he actually works for the Russian Security Services, but the Russian Church, since the time of Peter the Great, has always been politically under the control of, first, the Czar, then the communist leadership, and now under Putin himself. So, there’s nothing new about that.

Joe says, oh, this is, there you go, there you go. This is , my goodness, Joe, this is a bit intellectual for me. The Russian word, Putin, means of the road. Rasputin’s real name was Grigori Yefimovich and his reputation for licentiousness earned him the nickname Rasputin, which means debauch one. The similarity in their name endings is coincidence. How did the ethnic minorities respond? They couldn’t respond; they couldn’t respond. They just have to, well, and hardly grin and bear it, but bear it.

Q: Prince Charles attended King Michael’s funeral. Does this have any significance?

A: No, other than the families were, there had been these links with the families, with Marie, who was British. Prince Charles was then not king. They tend to visit royal funerals on the ground site. They visited King Constantine’s funeral, but they sent his British goddaughter, Princess Eugenie, to the, I think it was Eugenie, they sent her, not Beatrice, Eugenie to the funeral, not the king. They tend not to send the sovereign but to send a member of the royal family because they’re family and, obviously, the Greeks are family.

Oh, Rita’s put my blog up again. Thanks very much, Rita. You are brilliant because on my blog is both a small synoptic, a tiny little piece, about Romania that we’ve been talking about today in terms of dates, but also the book list which, if you looked at it when it first went up, I’ve edited because I put on the book, the book by, that we’ve been using, Jacob Mikanowski’s book, whom I’m interviewing for Jewish Book Week in Britain, and I put the book up this week because the full details are now on Amazon, so it isn’t published. I put the publication date on, which I think is May, but it’s all on my blog, tells you the publication date. You can order a, pre-order it, on Amazon and I, presumably that works in every country and not just, it must work in every country. And anyhow, the book is, presumably, printed, I don’t know, printed in America? It must be surely. No, the first published in Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland, and Australia. But you must be able to get it through Amazon in the States, I’m sure.

Shelly says, “Hitler gave Iron Guard members asylum "because the ultimate war was against the Jews.” I’m not going down that path. The ultimate aim was not that; the ultimate aim was to create a Thousand-Year Reich. The murder of the Jews was part of achieving that, but the aim is a Thousand-Year Reich.

Q: Is this the kind of historical narrative that fuels Russian paranoia?

A: Yes. Yeah. I knew about the slaughterhouse through both a historical book, my work with a British government scheme in ‘99 to compensate victims and Nazi persecution had money in banks in the U.K. before the war. It has always horrified me beyond belief. I discovered so much more working on this, Angela. That must have been horrendous, and I mentioned the July plot against Hitler when those caught, including an extremely interesting man called Adam von Trott, who was very pro-British and tried to send information from the German foreign office to Britain via Sweden throughout the War, until he was strung up on a meat hook. Dreadful, but fancy stringing up a five-year-old child. Angela, I wouldn’t have wanted your job for all the tea in China. Missed the name of the book on Romanian communism.

All the books, Myrna, are on my blog, and that I put, I’m not sure which one you were relate, you were referring to, but the books are on the blog.

Sonny says, “While many of us were immigrating "from South African, decided to say, "said they were going to Romania.” Oh dear, oh dear, Romania, oh dear. You’ve lowered the terms, Sonny, but I like it. BC, “Would you agree that country’s terms was crucial "for Jews in Romania?” Yes, Rita, Guardian articles.

Rita, you are an absolute gem with all these references that people can look up.

Q: Why was abortion and contraception banned?

A: Because, Shelly, they had a problem with declining, with a declining population, and they wanted, they wanted more people, not fewer people, and so, that’s why they did it.

Fay says, “Even animals are kinder to their young.” Stuart, that’s a very interesting point that you make, Stuart. “I understand that communist Romania allowed "a rabbinical school to ordain rabbis.

"I believe the only Warsaw Pact country to do so "during communist rule.” Thank you, Rita.

“This Romanian rabbi spent seven years translating the Torah "into Romania, even though he moved away. "Says he returned; it gives us another reference.”

Q: Esther, “Why doesn’t Romania restart international adoption "of those warehouse babies?”

A: It doesn’t want to know about it. It wants to bury it. It’d be interesting that, if they do prosecute, and I say if, whether attitudes would change. They just want to say it’s in the past. Don’t mention the war. As always, the joke is in Britain, you know, that the phrase that’s often, you don’t mention the war.

Oh, that’s nice of you. Thank you, Diane. Diane says, “I was in your, in the, and you,” my goodness, Diane, I hope you’re all right. You fade out mid-sentence.

Paul. Oh, no, no, no, Paul, no, it’s not as simple as one person, one vote. There are 60 different criteria used by the Economic Intelligence Unit. If you Google Economist Intelligence Unit, you can look at all the criteria, and you can see the score that Romania has against other countries. It isn’t straightforward. I believe I’m right in saying that during the Trump Presidency, America fell to not fully democratic and a flawed democracy. I think it actually fell, although it certainly was discussed that it would fall, but I think it did. That, you’ll be pleased to know that America and Britain are now called democracies. How accurate that is. You see, the point, Paul, is that, as with fascism, you have to have criteria, and then you have to measure those criteria so that, for example, in Britain, our immigration policy does not look democratic. In my view as a lawyer, it is not democratic. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you fail as a full democracy, but if you fail at certain levels on a number of the headings, then you become a flawed democracy. Of course, you can be no democracy at all, and then, you go into dictatorship and so on.

Q: “Could remaining oil affairs and reserves,” says Francine, “ease the loss of Russian oil?”

A: I think the answer to that is clearly no, but I’m not an expert on oil at all.

But Juliana’s writing, “No comment. "Not enough oil fields anymore.” Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thank you. Oops. I’ve lost it. I’ve lost it more ways than one, but I’ve lost, I’ve lost the comments. There we are.

Maria, “To illustrate Hungary’s still existing regret "about the Treaty of Versailles, a few years ago, "I was shopping for gifts in Budapest, and to my amazement, "I found soccer socks being sold with "a black embroidered outline on it "representing the old large Hungary.” Yes. Hungary, it is the only country I’ve ever visited in Europe I’ve not visited all countries, obviously, where there is a distinctly anti-British view because they blame Britain that Hungary was treated so badly following the settlement after Versailles. And oh, the other thing, the other thing, Maria, is that you can find maps in Hungary which show Greater Hungary and not the Hungary of today. I found that when I visited Hungary. Women were forced to produce babies en masse to increase the population comment. That, it’s too horrible to think, and that is exactly, of course, what Hitler did in those dreadful, dreadful places where women were taken to produce children. I actually stayed in one, which is now an adult education centre in Austria, and once I knew the story, it really was horrifying to stay there.

All of that business, Juliana, is earlier than we were talking about World War I.

“I live in Romania and, of course, "the system is far from perfect. "I assure you, we live in a democratic country.

"Thank you for the lecture.” Yes, you do, but according to the international statistic, it’s a flawed democracy, and I think almost every country in Eastern Europe, probably bar Slovenia, appears as a flawed democracy. It is a technical term. It doesn’t mean it’s not democratic, but it is a flawed democracy. And do, those of you interested, do look up on Google the Economist Intelligence Unit classifications of democracy. It is absolutely fascinating, but it’s not something I can do in five minutes or even in an hour. It’s complex.

Sheila says, “I think the only rabbinic seminary "in communist Europe’s in Budapest.” I don’t know the answer to that. When, Trudy’s next on; ask Trudy. She will know.

Oh, Rita, you’ve come to my aid again. I shall have to send you; I shall , I shall have to send you part of my fee, I think. This is becoming embarrassing. You’re wonderful. Serena said, “We visited a new monument in Budapest "to all the places that are no longer Hungary.” How fascinating. That must be after I’ve been to Hungary, I’ve had two holidays in Hungary, both of which were excellent, I have to say, but I wouldn’t go to Hungary now.

Jonathan, “I recommend The Dean’s December by Saul Bellow "for post-war context on Romania "after he won the Nobel Prize the previous year.”

And Juliana says, “Thank you.” And Rita just said, “My pleasure to provide links, "and no fee.” Oh, you’re a jewel.

And Juliana says, “Thank you” to me, but I need to say thank you to you, and thank you so much for all your interesting points, but particularly those that I could have said and didn’t, and you mentioned, so thanks for listening, and we go on a new theme all together next week as we start a longer course on the history of Germany which as all of you know, is absolutely fascinating European story and many of you may have links to parts of that story. Well, not the mediaeval part, of course, but later parts of the German story.

Thank you very much for listening. I’m about to go and have my dinner. Others of you are about to go off and enjoy a sunny day in America, I’m sure. And it’s black as ink here, and it’s been bitterly cold. I’m jealous of those of you with sun, and in Israel, you will have sun. I’m so jealous of the sun. So farewell, everyone. Bye-bye; see you next Monday.