ROMANIA: In the town where communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was born, many look back to the days before the revolution with fondness

Record ID: 721726

  • Title: ROMANIA: In the town where communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was born, many look back to the days before the revolution with fondness
  • Date: 20th December 2009
  • Summary: BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (FILE) (REUTERS) ROMANIAN DICTATOR NICOLAE CEAUSESCU AT OFFICIAL FUNCTION VARIOUS OF CEAUSESCU AND WIFE ELENA GREETING PEOPLE BUCHAREST, ROMANIA (FILE - 1969) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CEAUSESCU WITH U.S. PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON TOASTING WITH DRINKS
  • Embargoed: 4th January 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Romania
  • Country: Romania
  • Topics: History,Economic News
  • Reuters ID: LVA7XO3H9MLYPG66PR8TNL37K92K
  • Story Text: Undisputed leader of Romania for nearly 25 years, communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu pursued rigid internal control, combined with the most independent foreign policy of any Warsaw Pact story.
    He was a leader most loved and most hated. A 2007 poll by the George Soros foundation identified Ceausescu as the best leader of the past century. But he is also ranked as the president who has done the most harm.
    People who live in the Romanian town of Scornicesti have special memories of the man who was executed on Christmas Day 1989, after a revolution and street riots that historians believe killed more than 1,500 people.
    Ceausescu was born in a modest house in Scornicesti in January 1918. Today it is a memorial and is looked after by his nephew Emil Barbulescu.
    "He was the only leader, including those from other communist countries, who really believed in what he was doing. Particularly for long term things. In 1990 he wanted to open an international bank with Arab countries. He wanted to help countries from the third world, to give them money with lower interest rates than the World Bank and the IMF. Also, with this, he wanted to show the superiority of socialism, which is trying to help, not to make money," Barbulescu said.
    During Ceausescu's regime, residents of Scornicesti were seen to have a privileged position. Scornicesti was one of the first villages to be razed as part of Ceausescu's plans to industrialize rural Romania by moving millions of peasants to model communist apartment blocks. Coming from there was seen as a passport to success. And while many Romanians went hungry due to food rationing and bare shelves in shops, Scornicesti shops were among the few that had goods on sale.
    "We had food, everything. A lot of people used to come to Scornicesti to take everything they needed," said resident, Dumitru Ciobanu.
    "We had good salaries, a place to work. After the revolution, everything started to change. Now we are in the situation where we have almost nothing," added Stefan Ilie.
    Like many places in Romania, Scornicesti is now suffering.
    A fifth of Romania's population is living on under three US dollars a day, living standards are less than half of the EU average, and less than a quarter of the population is legally employed.
    Romanians nostalgic for the old times say the shift to democracy and European Union membership has robbed them of stability and sent the country off in the wrong direction.
    Although the Black Sea state joined NATO in 2004 and the EU three years later, it has since struggled to transform itself into an open economy and is the bloc's second poorest state and its most corrupt, alongside Greece and fellow newcomer Bulgaria.
    Once the pride of Scornicesti, the town's football stadium now appears abandoned.
    Built in 1986 it was the home of the town's football team which played in Romania's first division.
    Today, behind the broken glass, the stadium designed for thousands of spectators, is now the home of four makeshift textile factories struggling to survive in the economic crisis.
    Shift chief Florica Telea is not so convinced life was better in the town under Ceausescu.
    "People say we lived well here in Scornicesti, because of Ceausescu. This is not true," she says.
    "He used to came here as president. Then it was one president coming, now there are many of them coming. The only bad thing was we couldn't express ourselves. Now we can do that, but with no results," she added.
    Maria Mitrache says many wish the revolution hadn't happened.
    "We were making progress, we had a huge glass house, a chicken farm where I used to work for 25 years - now nothing remains. We miss him a bit," she said, referring to Ceausescu.
    Barbulescu does not agree with the way his uncle was condemned and executed, and says Ceausescu had a more difficult life than people think.
    "From the time he was 13, he didn't have personal life. Even when he was at Neptun," he said, referring to the Black Sea resort where Ceausescu had a villa.
    "In 1989 we lived 10 metres from his villa. Everyday people from Bucharest used to come for meetings. There was everything you could want, but it was not a holiday," Barbulescu said, showing off photographs of a planned memorial statue. He intends to put the three-metre statue outside the house in which his uncle was born, opening it to visitors in the spring.
    Romanians have never had a satisfactory explanation why their revolution was the region's bloodiest, or even exactly how it unfolded. Historians say troops killed more than 1,500 anti-communists across Romania starting on December 16. A week later Ceausescu was convicted in a show trial and shot along with his wife in a barracks courtyard.
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