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Coping With Ceausescu's Legacy
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17864 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1990 |
3,146 Words |
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Robert R. King
Robert R. King, the author of Minorities Under Communism:
Nationalities as a Source of Tension Among Balkan Communist
States (Harvard University Press, 1973), worked in East
European affairs at the National Security Council in the
Carter White House. He is former assistant director of
research at Radio Free Europe in Munich, West Germany, and
currently works on Capital Hill. |
The symbol of the collapse of communism in East Germany is hordes of Germans standing on the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. In Czechoslovakia, the symbol is masses protesting in Wenceslas Square. In Romania, it is the body of the executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Last year the citizens of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia cheered the end of the Communist Party's monopoly of power and the end of the communist political and economic system. Romania was the only East European state to suffer the violent overthrow of its ancient regime, and the cost was high - an estimated 10,000 people lost their lives. Not only was Romania's revolution brutal and vicious, the change was expressed in very different terms. Unlike the other countries of Eastern Europe, Romania’s revolution was personal - it was the toppling of a tyrant, the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu.
Ceausescu is dead, but Romania's new leaders are now grappling with his legacy. Their tasks is formidable: to create genuine democratic political institutions. Rebuild the country's economy, restore its international reputation, and cope with expectations heightened by the exhilaration of the Romanian revolution. The task is difficult because of the legacy of Ceausescu's quarter-century of misrule and malfeasance.
While Romania's Communist Party and political institutions were similar to those of its Warsaw Pact allies, there were important differences as well. Power was concentrated in the hands of the party chief; he was all powerful, not the first among equals in the Politburo. In many respects, Ceausescu's regime was much more like the totalitarian Stalinism of the 1930s and 1940s than the oligarchic party structure that evolved in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after Khrushchev. The party was one of the principal instruments through which Ceausescu ruled, but it did not temper or limit his power. It was an instrument for the regime. The Romanian party was by far the largest in Eastern Europe with one-third of the working adult population as members. Membership, however, was simply one requirement to get ahead in the system, and party members were not the "vanguard of the proletariat," let alone participants in any kind of decision making.
CEAUSESCU'S GRIP
To prevent any subordinate from establishing a solid geographical or organizational power base from which to challenge him, Ceausescu rotated individuals in and out of positions. Officials
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