Why do we do it?

Why do we watch questionable talk shows on questionable television channels (in this case Antena 3) knowing how loaded the content is, how subjective the guests are and – to all intents and purposes – knowing exactly what will be said.

Last night the subject was a report that had been run by Al Jazeera (watch it below) about Romania organising Nicolae Ceausescu-themed tours of places where the former Romanian dictator was born, lived and killed. As we have more than a passing interest in tourism in these parts, we watched it.

We should have known better.

Antena 3′s headline (which ran across the bottom of the screen) was the ludicrous: ‘Elena Udrea cheltuie bani publici sa-l popularizeze pe Ceausescu‘ (Elena Udrea is spending public money to make Ceausescu popular).

If you watch the report, listen out for the great line: ‘Ceausescu’s nephew, who has turned his uncle’s home into a shrine, wants nothing to do with the commercialisation of the former leader…‘

Anyway, back to Udrea. As much as we are out of character in leaping to her defence, it needs to be said that she isn’t spending public money to ‘make Ceausescu popular.’ She is spending public money on organising and then promoting a Ceausescu-themed tour which will be sold to a small niche of visitors which happens to like that sort of thing. (And believe us, such a niche exists).

Though we haven’t taken the tour ourselves (neither has anyone: it barely exists as an idea) we doubt it will be used as an attempt to popularize Ceausescu or to rehabilitate him. No, it is simply a niche tour for a niche market.

For – dare we ask – why shouldn’t Romania organise Ceausescu tours? Really, what is the problem? To us it reeks of hypocrisy and – for want of a better word – snobism. We want tourists, appears to be the message, but only a certain kind of tourist doing certain things, such as telling us how lovely our countryside is, how fantastic the Bukovina monasteries are and how we have the most beautiful women in the world. That is the kind of tourist certain people in Romania appear to want.

Radu Tudor, the presenter of last night’s show, said that it makes him sad that ‘the only thing Udrea can find in Romania to promote is Ceausescu, when there are so many wonderful things.’

No, Ceausescu not the only thing she has found to promote. It is one of many things. All Udrea is doing is appealing to a certain market that is interested in such things. As there is a niche for these things, why mot milk it?

There are tours of Nazi bunkers in Berlin. Why? Because there is a market for them.

Honestly, as magnificent as they are, not everyone loves Maramures and the bloody monasteries. (A point we have made before).

If you don’t like Ceausescu tours, don’t take one.

Nicolae Ceausescu suddenly realises that he will be blamed for all of Romania's problems until the end of time

We come in peace.

Whatever side of the barricades you find yourself on in the the Bucharest stray dog debate, can we suggest that we all decide to agree on the fact that the stray dog problem – like so many others for which he gets the blame in contemporary Romania – has nothing whatsoever to do with Nicolae Ceausescu.

Time and again the same old story gets rolled out for the benefit of all (especially foreigners who know no different). It goes something like this:

The problem of stray dogs dates from the time of Nicolae Ceausescu, when houses were destroyed and replaced by blocks. Dog owners were reluctant to take their animals into their apartments, and so they abandoned them on the streets of the capital, where they bred.

The story is false on almost every level.

First of all, while thousands of houses were destroyed during the 1970s and 1980s, and their inhabitants then moved into apartments, large numbers of those people who moved in to Bucharest’s new blocks during those years came to the city from elsewhere in Romania, often the countryside. What’s more, by all accounts the stray dog situation was – while not perfect – certainly kept under control by the communist regime, which often resorted to killing strays. (There is is also the fact that food was hard to come by and there was often nothing left to throw the dogs).

Secondly however – and most pertinently – unless you believe the conspiracy theorists Nicolae Ceausescu was shot on Christmas Day, 1989. That’s 21 years ago and counting.

The average life-span of the average dog is 13 years.

You go away and do the maths and then come back and tell us that it is all Ceausescu’s fault.

Two enormous cathedrals are currently being built in Bucharest: one orthodox, and one secular.

The orthodox cathedral was last week handed 10 million lei (around €2.5 million) in funding by the Romanian state, a move which sparked (understandable) outrage amongst a large section of liberal Romanian society (which believes that the state should not be funding cathedrals at all). The project will cost in total around 200 million lei, with the Romanian Orthodox Church now expected to find the rest from donations, benefactors or the banks. The current government has stated quite clearly that there can be no more public money for the project.

The secular cathedral on the other hand – which is now close to completion – has so far benefited from almost €90 million in state funding (either directly from the government or from the local budget), and it is estimated that it will need another €60 million before completion this summer. Unlike the orthodox cathedral (which is being built on open space behind Casa Poporului) the secular cathedral required the demolition of a historic monument.

And yet – with a couple of honourable exceptions, including the incomparable Sorin Ionita in Evenimentul Zilei (in Romanian) this morning – we have heard nor read barely a word of objection to the public funding of the secular cathedral. Shurley shome mishtake? A cathedral is, after all, a cathedral, regardless of the religion?

This is how the orthodox cathedral, officially to be known as the Catedrala Neamului will look when it’s finished:

The apocalyptic sky comes free

It will be here:

—

This is how the secular cathedral, to be known officially as the National Stadium, will look:

A new home for the poor and needy

It will be here:

—

Yes, one is a church and one is a football stadium.

But is there any fundamental difference in the two? Both are places of worship for exclusive groups, and it could well be argued that over time, more people will make use of the church than the stadium. It will at least be free to get in the church.

We disagree entirely with the state funding churches. But we disagree in equal measure with the state funding football stadiums. Football is a wealthy sport. Romanian football is crap, but it is valuable crap: the TV rights for the Romanian first division for the next three years will be auctioned next month. Despite being of an appalling standard, the rights could fetch as much as €120 million – or more. The owners of the three primary Bucharest clubs – all of whom have their eyes on playing at least European matches at the new ground – are all wealthy men. If ever there was a sport in Romania which could do without state hand-outs, it is football.

What’s more, Bucharest had a perfectly good stadium, right where the new one will stand, in fact: August 23rd Stadium, a minor-masterpiece of a socialist superbowl of which all traces – including a kitsch neoclassical loggia – have now been destroyed:

(OK, we admit it: August 23 – known in its final years as Lia Manoliu Stadium – was not perfect. In fact, it was far from perfect. It was a crumbling wreck by the end to be honest, and getting in and out was a real pain, possibly even life-threatening. But could it not have been modernised? And besides, many of the old problems – especially access – will apply to the new stadium).

August 23 may have been Nicolae Ceausescu’s preferred venue for extravagant birthday parties in his own honour, but it was also the scene of some of Romanian football’s finest victories, in the days when they had a decent team. Such as, ahem, this one:

(Note the terrific touch from Rodion Camataru: a marvelous centre-forward yet always overlooked when discussing great Romanian footballers of the past. Can anyone tell me why?)

Anyway, matters arising:

1. Where were the Dorobanti ‘Save our buildings’ mob when the bulldozers went in to knock down August 23?

The last days of August 23rd, and not a protester in sight.

2. Should hundreds of millions of euros of public money be spent on a football stadium (and concert venue: some locals are very excited about the new stadium’s potential to attract big name pop and rock acts) which only a tiny minority will benefit from?

3. Why do people object to the state funding orthodox cathedrals but not secular ones?

Answers on the proverbial postcard, please.

Just as Hosni Mubarak was being forced to step down as president of Egypt on Friday night, we poured ourselves a large Campari and settled on to the sofa to watch Andrei Ujica’s epic The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu.

The premise of the film was to make a thorough biography of Nicolae Ceausescu’s period as Romanian leader (which began in 1965, though he only had himself declared president in 1974: we did not learn this fact from the film, however) using only official footage.

Yet with the exception of the fact that Ceausescu could do wit if he really had to, we learnt nothing new over the course of the three hours the film lasts. Anyone already familiar with the rise and fall of Nicolae Ceausescu would have seen almost all of the footage used and will be aware of all the events featured. This is just as well, for you will actually need to know your Romanian history from 1965-1989 to make head or tail of what’s going on, as there is no narration and little context: even dates and places are dispensed with. We are simply meant to know who the characters involved are, and where the events are taking place.

So we are not therefore sure who the film is aimed at.

Foreigners wanting to learn about Ceausescu will find it confusing and impenetrable, while Romanians looking for new insights into their former leader will be equally disappointed. Aside from a press conference at Karlovy Vary in 1968, in which Ceausescu – clearly uncomfortable at having to face unvetted questions from Czech journalists (this was at the height of the Prague Spring) – lurches from predictable Marxist-Leninist rhetoric to sharp ripostes in a matter of minutes, there is little of interest. The megalomania really kicks in after visits to China and North Korea, he ages very quickly in the 1980s, he hated Gorbachev, and his trial was a sham. But we knew all that already.

Indeed, to the uninitiated, the film may appear as little more than a hodgepodge of clips from Ceausescu’s life, not always shown in chronological order. At one point, we leave the his 60th birthday celebrations in 1979 for his investiture as Romanian president in 1974, during which he tells us he is 55.

But then what on earth do we know about documentary film making? Bugger all! The film has won a number of awards. The New York Review of Books was more than impressed.

And certainly, the film is not without merit. Besides the revealing Karlovy Vary episode, there is also room for Constantin Parvulescu’s astonishing speech denouncing Ceausescu at the 12th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) in 1979:

Whatever Parvulescu’s motives (he was pro-Soviet Union), this old man was one of very few people to publicly speak out against Ceausescu while the dictator was in his pomp. Others – who today like to portray themselves as life-long anti-communists – might like to remember what they were doing in 1979. Some of them, we imagine, would have been jollying it up at sea.

For Brits, the other wonderful part of the film is of course Ceausescu’s state visit to Britain in 1978. Again, however, it’s only entertaining because we know so much about the visit already (this is a wonderful essay on the subject by the peerless Christopher Lawson): how the Queen never forgave foreign minister David Owen for setting the whole thing up (Ceausescu was being wooed because he was in the market for aeroplanes); how Elena – by then one of the world’s most decorated chemists (on paper) was awarded an honorary professorship by gullible rectors at the Royal Institute of Chemistry; how Ceausescu himself was given a knighthood. The visit deserves a film all of its own.

The visit also of course gave birth to what is still probably the best Private Eye cover in the magazine’s history:

Yet for those people wanting real insight into Ceausescu and his regime, the gold standard probably remains the BBC’s 2005 documentary The King of Communism. It is (as we write) still on YouTube, here.

As The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu is not (in our opinion, and it is merely an opinion) a satisfactory telling of the Ceausescu tale, it begs the question: Is there anything remotely resembling a decent biography of Nicolae Ceausescu? On film or in print? We think not.

A plethora of journalistic affairs were hurriedly published in the wake of the 1989 revolution (the best is that by Edward Behr). Since then, interest has clearly waned in the subject, both in Romania and abroad. There are a couple of very good books about the revolution itself (this is the best) but no decent biography of Ceausescu itself.

Or is there a decent volume we are unaware of?

That turning off the lights for an hour has become such an acceptable (and, let’s face it, painless) way of protesting says much about the top down, elitist green movement’s world view, which sees deprivation and poverty as lifestyle choices, and thinks that people in the developing world should be spared the excesses of our comfortable western lifestyles.

That the Romanian government has decided to do its bit by turning off the lights at Casa Poporului should be particularly despicable to anyone with a memory that stretches back beyond 1989.

In those days, electricity certainly couldn’t be taken for granted in Romania. Read this previous post on the subject to find out more. That today it is so cheap (relatively) – and can be wasted as we see fit – is something to celebrate.

Those people who think switching off the lights is such a good idea would do well to give away all their worldly possessions and head off to somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa where there simply is no electricity to switch off. Or, indeed, some villages in rural Romania.

Humanity’s priority now should be making sure that everyone in the world has access to cheap electricity, so that we can turn more lights on, not off.

Romania, keep the lights on!