Question on Romania

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You hate what he did only because you are a capitalist.
He could have done errors in other domains, but there is nothing wrong with this policy.

What kind of an answer is this? Because I'm a capitalist? Please, come up with a better argument than that.

His policy of forcing women to have children, I believe, is completely inhumane. Have you seen footage of the Romanian orphanages? Where they have to live in their own shit because people gave up their children because they couldn't look after them, and the state's welfare policy was bloody awful.

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Rather than the guy being a "prick" I think it was just a case of cultural incompatibility- between the leader's vision and the popular culture in 20th century Romania.

Or at any other time in Romania. Any policy (inhumane or not) could be labelled as 'cultural incompatability'. The fact that he carried these out at 'the wrong time' doesn't matter: they were still completely disatrous, and detrimental to Romania.

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Romania was underpopulated, the birth policies were reasonable. Are you going to argue against them or just cut n' paste and hope that we are all sufficiently 'shocked'?

I don't have the source to hand (atm) but Romania actually had a higher birthrate than its neighbours did (prior) so his family planning policy wasn't exactly necessary, and given the state of the economy (lack of food, etc) it was never going to work out.

Also, his taxing policy on women who were childless was extremely discriminative.

He lived in a dream world.

Ceausescu was a piece of crap. The guy lived in a fantasy dream world where he can indefinitely barrow money from western capitalists to finance his wet dreams of being a virtual king. Sure, it was great for a while...that was until the western creditors came knocking on his door... "where's our money?"

Ceausescu's answer? Export everything Romania has to pay off the debt! Including food!

Yay! Bread lines!

I agree as well Ceausescu was a negative figure.

"The only people who make no mistakes are people who don't do anything" I believe Lenin said something to that effect.

Along with something along the lines of "People say our system is flawed, well I hear that the first steam engine was flawed too"


As you can tell I would not be good at parroting party rhetoric.

'Communists' defending people like him really give the entire ideology a bad name...

A lot of people defend George Bush, or Tony Blair.
Some even defend Deng Xiaoping.

For the people of the US and the UK Bush and Blair are nowhere near the league of the various eastern block dictators.
Blair was actually a pretty good leader for a while, its only in the past few years he's really lost it.

Xiaoping...eh?
What do you mean some people even defend him? He's usually held in a undeservidly good light.

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What do you mean some people even defend him? He's usually held in a undeservidly good light.

He don't deserve any good light. He destroyed all socialist legacy. Now China is building towards capitalism. And people defend him. So where is the problem in saying that other people in romania could have made errors?

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He don't deserve any good light. He destroyed all socialist legacy. Now China is building towards capitalism. And people defend him. So where is the problem in saying that other people in romania could have made errors?

That's going too far.
He doesn't deserve to be as well regarded as he has been but he wasn't all bad. Few people are.
But thats totally besides the point- you said 'even people defend him' as if such people were a crazy minority like those fanatical pro-Bush folks you see floating about when its the norm to see him as quite good.

I don't get what you mean on Romania. Other people probally would have made errors yes but...they didn't. There could have been someone worse then Hitler but there wasn't.

For the record, I merely show an interest in Ceausescu's Romania. I truely recognise the country for what it were, east Frag.

The Deutsch Democratic Republic was more my style, even more so than the USSR.

Ian

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For the record, I merely show an interest in Ceausescu's Romania. I truely recognise the country for what it were, east Frag.

Some folks here might find that a wee bit insulting. Romania was and still is a beautiful country with wonderful people and a rich heritage, even if Ceausescu and his cronies were total Frag.

Everyone has their right to be insulted, I'm just talking about Copsa Mica and other such wonders.

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I don't get what you mean on Romania.

And I don't understand your opinion. I tend to be skeptic against propaganda learned in capitalist history books. That's all.

So when you say:

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'Communists' defending people like him really give the entire ideology a bad name...

On what do you base to make such assumptions? Anyway, I never said that Ceausescu was my hero, or that he was a good leader though.
That's it, that's all.

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And I don't understand your opinion. I tend to be skeptic against propaganda learned in capitalist history books. That's all.

'Capitalist history books'? Huh?
Academics as a group are generally regarded by the establishment as notoriously left wing.

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So when you say:
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'Communists' defending people like him really give the entire ideology a bad name...

On what do you base to make such assumptions? Anyway, I never said that Ceausescu was my hero, or that he was a good leader though.
That's it, that's all.

The fact that they strung him up is a pretty major pointer that he was a terrible leader.
Other then that...Well just everything. He was in many ways your archtypical evil dictator.

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That's going too far.
He doesn't deserve to be as well regarded as he has been but he wasn't all bad. Few people are.
But thats totally besides the point- you said 'even people defend him' as if such people were a crazy minority like those fanatical pro-Bush folks you see floating about when its the norm to see him as quite good.

I don't get what you mean on Romania. Other people probally would have made errors yes but...they didn't. There could have been someone worse then Hitler but there wasn't.

I don't think Ceausescu drove Romania to the pits deliberately. I mean, ROmanian industry under him was sophisticated enough to manufacture indegenous aircraft (Ex: IAR 93). That speaks volumes. Not even the GDR acquired this level of sophistication, industrially. Ceausescu does end up getting lots of flak from the social side, especially with his 1966 decree.

Hoxha passed on a similar decree a year later, in Albania, when he banned religion. It's just that Ceausescu targetted individualism in favour of a family centric society whereas Hoxha targetted religious ideology in favour of an alternative Social ideology. Since most of us here aren't really religious, or don't identify with religion that much, Hoxha's move somehow seems not too insane.

Since most of us here have grown up in a cosmopolitan environment, which focuses heavily on individual freedoms, Ceausescu's moves on the social front sounds harsh & bizzare to many of us.

There was nothing inherently wrong with Ceausescu encouraging people to have bigger families and move away from nuclear family into a joint family setup. That didn't work out too well in Romania, considering it was a cosmopolitan culture other than the traditional villages, which were steadily declining demographically all across E. Europe from the 60s onwards.

Basically Ceausescu tried to steer Romania away from cosmopolitanism and the nuclear family setup into something more traditional & w/ joint families. And he failed as it seems that the entire "family centric" society didn't fly too well with Romanians. I don't think he should be outright condemned as if he was a murderous saboteur, though.

Whether you like it or not, most women in India, for example who know Ceausescu in semi rural / rural locales consider him a hero by and large. That's because outside the cities (majority of the populus lives outside the urban areas), we have a more family centric society...and not so much a nuclear / cosmopolitan one.

It was a big time miscalculation, which probably didn't bode too well for Romanian society, I'm with you on that. Speaking of which, is present day Romania any better off for the proletariat than Ceausescu's Romania???

Well yeah, As far as I'm aware Ceausescu's Romania was pretty damn good, in the 60s thru 70s...then in the 1980s, the money ran out.

Thats when it went bad.

I like the fact that he was loved in the West and considered a 'freedom fighter'.

Well of course bloody Margaret Thatcher would like him ;p and Richard "george lucas loosely based palpatine on me" Nixon.. (It was Nixon who liked him, or was it Reagan?..which would make more sense..damnable braincells have *ahem* gone to jelly tonight)

Typical bullshit, love a government thats much worse than the USSR ever was, just because he wasn't with the Soviets.

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I like the fact that he was loved in the West and considered a 'freedom fighter'.

I don't think Western governments "love" anyone. There were instances when Ceausescu opposed the USSR, such as Hungary. Such instances were capitalized by the Western governments, obviously. But that doesn't go to show that Ceausescu was an imperialist puppet or a poster boy.

Several Romanian industrial initiatives weren't looked upon too kindly by the USSR, one of the more famous examples being the IAR-93 project, which was successfully completed under Ceausescu.

Also, Ceausescu had more Western dealings since several key components of his industrial programmes were of Western origin. For instance, if you take the IAR 93, the airplane used a Rolls Royce core instead of a Tumansky.

I fail to see how you can equate Ceausescu in the same league as a puppet...