Word: ceaucescu
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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...Romanians accept a rigid party control and internal monopoly of power by Ceaucescu and his entourage including a fulsome personality cult) in return for a sense of national pride and independence unique in their history of foreign domination. The Russians put up with the luxury of a separate Romanian 'place in the sun', secure in the knowledge that no Prague spring of liberalisation will appear on the streets of Bucharest. With Ceaucescu playing the nationalism and religion cards so skillfully, dissident opposition is weak...
Take Romania: "an island of Latin-speaking people in a sea of Slavs," as they like to see themselves. Its flamboyant leader, Nicolai Ceaucescu, has brillantly grafted this sense of identity to buttress his regime. A steady stream of contacts-mainly with Third World countries-and visits from non-Soviet bloc leaders (the most recent being Chairman Hua of China) underline a foreign policy independent of Moscow but now where Romania keeps her presence if not her troops within the Warsaw Pact...
...Transylvania. Their direct contacts with Hungary and East Germany are severly restricted by the regime: for although these countries may be Communist also, their nationalist affinity with their Transylvanian kin is too close and potentially separatist for comfort. It is highly significant that the most serious recent opposition to Ceaucescu was the Transylvanian miners' strike, where most of the leaders arrested were Hungarian speaking...