Word: bucharest
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...TIME interviews with key Libyan players, including three with Gaddafi going back before 9/11, it was clear that other important factors were also at work. Foremost among them was the collapse of the Soviet empire, which brought down Gaddafi's once-powerful friends in capitals like Moscow, Prague and Bucharest. Another important factor was the rise of Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East, which resulted in extremist attacks in Libya and against Gaddafi personally...
...Europe until 1989, and Judt takes some choice shots at Western intellectuals enamored by the experiment in "real existing Socialism" playing out inside the Iron Curtain. "I come from a country where no one laughs any more, where no one sings," French poet Paul Eluard told an audience in Bucharest in 1948. "But you have discovered the sunshine of happiness." At the time, an estimated 1 million Romanians were imprisoned in dire conditions or engaged in often deadly slave labor, digging out the Danube-Black Sea Canal. But Judt also gives the intellectuals credit when they did get it right...
...serving as a visiting scholar in the U.S., goes so far as to say that "in the eyes of many people, the Chinese have become the new vanguard in the Communist world." More surprising still are the views of Silviu Brucan, professor of sociology at the University of Bucharest in Rumania, a nation formally allied with Moscow in the Warsaw Pact. Writing in the American magazine World Policy Journal, Brucan opines that if China succeeds in building a modern economy "the Kremlin will then be confronted with a dramatic choice: to cling to the old ways and rely more...
...dismal. Freedom of movement and expression are sharply limited, as is the right to travel abroad. Internal movement is subject to police surveillance; censorship is ubiquitous. Many East European cities, despite restoration efforts, still present a gray, depressing sight: unpainted buildings, dingy streets, understocked shops. In the Rumanian capital, Bucharest, queues at food stores form at 3:30 a.m., and "energy police" roam the streets to make sure no one is burning more than one 25-watt light bulb at night . Poland is an even worse basket case, plagued by perennial food shortages and a foreign debt of $27 billion...
...Life opens during the couple's early years, when Nicolae was a humble shoemaker and Elena sold seeds at the Bucharest market, then traces the Ceausescus' rise to power and infamy. One lavish scene re-enacts the staged mass rallies they were so fond of organizing; another emphasizes the presence of the secret police, the dreaded Securitate, in every aspect of daily life. Those who lived in Ceausescu's police state "feel sad watching the play," says Dinulescu. For those too young to remember, though, it's a vaudeville treatment of history that's packed with good music and lots...