Word: ceausescu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Westerners might wonder how things could get worse. But returning to the city I knew all too well under the iron hand of Ceausescu, I understand why Rumanians feel that they've never had it so good. They revel in their traffic jams; Ceausescu all but banned cars to save fuel for export. After 24 years of state-sponsored terror, martial law by young soldiers who defeated the Securitate thugs in the Christmas revolution is a relief. "I like waiting for a newspaper," Ion, a Bucharest undergraduate, said last week. "For the first time here, there's news worth reading...
...versions of just how Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena died keep surfacing. The official story, according to an attending prosecutor, is that following their trial, the couple were escorted into a barracks courtyard, still believing that their lives would be spared. When they saw a firing squad forming, the two began "running wildly" around the courtyard. Nicolae was trapped in a corner and shot. Elena, still running, was shot in the back by an army officer. Other soldiers proceeded to riddle the bodies with submachine- gun fire...
Harvardicus irritatus is usually defined as "an epidemic that transforms predominantly nice, bright college kids into snivelling, whining wretches who deserve to be airdropped into downtown Bucharest with `I loved Nikolai Ceausescu' tattoos carved into their foreheads." Every January, this dreaded disorder pervades the student body, causing widespread stress, anxiety and generally infantile behavior...
Neighboring Rumania is emerging from the Ceausescu tyranny with two ethnic traumas. In the west, almost half the country consists of the disputed region of Transylvania, where most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarians live. Ceausescu regularly accused them of sabotage and planned to destroy their villages and force them into housing complexes. Delighted at Ceausescu's fall, the Hungarians still wonder if the new government will treat them fairly. Case in point: the handling of Laszlo Tokes, the dissident Hungarian clergyman in the town of Timisoara whose harassment by Ceausescu's forces in December helped spark the revolt that eventually...
...east lies the Soviet republic of Moldavia, which Stalin created in 1940, when he annexed Bessarabia in a deal with Hitler. During the years when Ceausescu kept his people hungry and cold to sell food and fuel abroad, there was little reason for the 2 million Rumanians on the Soviet side of the border to long for home. Now, with democratic elections scheduled for April, some Moldavians have called for reunification with Rumania. Meanwhile, Rumania's newly recreated National Peasant Party has called for the return of the lost territory. To deflect just such demands, Moscow promised it would open...