Romania: beautiful land with Communist debris
Bonnie and I have just returned from a five-week tour around Romania. (A tip of the hat to my son John who filled in for me during my absence.) More than a few people asked us, “Why Romania?”
Why not? We’d never been there before. I’ve only met one or two other people who had been there, and it seemed interesting. A country which inspires vampire movies has got to have something going for it.
So what did we find? An incredibly beautiful country, marred by the remnants of many decades of Communist rule. The Carpathian Mountains form something of an internal skeleton, curving from the north to the south, then bending back to the west, before heading north once again. It looks something like a giant fish hook and contains within its interior most of what is known as Transylvania. They are similar to the Appalachian Mountains in America, but somewhat taller, and sometimes more rugged. We took hundreds of stunning pictures.
In addition to natural beauty, churches, monasteries, old forts and castles — some ruins, some in great shape — were found throughout Transylvania, where we spent the great majority of our time. The most unusual graveyard I’ve ever seen was in the town of Sapanta outside another glorious Orthodox church. “The Merry Cemetery.” Thanks to the Internet, you can look it up. Lots of pictures.
Unfortunately, amidst all that was glorious, beautiful and uplifting are the remnants of 50-plus years of Communist rule, most of it under Nicolae Ceausescu with the help of his wife, Elena. Say what you will about collectivist regimes, they certainly know how to create ugly, and on a grand scale. In the capital city of Bucharest, thousands of acres of historic churches, monasteries, homes and other buildings were razed to provide for a grandiose civic center, crowned, on raised ground, by the largest — or second largest — building in the world (the Pentagon being the other one.) Throughout the country, land was cleared to put up soulless apartment buildings. All authoritarian regimes, and even otherwise nonauthoritarian regimes, do this as a way to provide cheap housing to the masses, while at the same time facilitating social control.
The ugliness extends beyond the architectural. Agriculture is, to the extent possible, collectivized. Religion is discouraged. Speech, assembly, news and culture in general are controlled by the party. Dissent is not tolerated and punished where it rears its ugly head. Prisons are a growth business under such regimes, and Romania was no exception. It took extraordinarily brave men and women to stand up to such a regime.
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Many years ago, on another trip behind the former Iron Curtain in what is now Czechia, I encountered an old woman who grew up in the country before Hitler and the subsequent Communist rule. She said the worst damage was to the people, who now were passive when before they had been active, who were reliant on the state when before they had been self-reliant, and who had a dim and pessimistic view of life and its future possibilities. We saw much of the same in Romania, especially among older people, who looked back on the Ceausescu regime with some longing. Sure, there was skimpy food, no electricity sometimes, and shortages of everything, but everyone had a place to live and everyone had a job and everyone felt secure that, as long as they kept their mouth shut — informers were everywhere — life would continue on.
For me, brought up to believe that freedom was the essential thing in life, it is sobering to meet people who would gladly give up freedom for security — even a very low level of security. To many people, opportunity is frightening, because opportunity brings with it risks.
As we wade our way through this political season, and get beyond personalities, it is well to remind ourselves that, stripped to its essence, one party promises more security through surrender to the state, and the other promises more opportunity by liberation from the state. It’s shaping up to be a close call.
Charles Milliken is a professor emeritus after 22 years of teaching economics and related subjects at Siena Heights University. He can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Charles Milliken: Romania: beautiful land with Communist debris
