Word: escu
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Rumania was the first Warsaw Pact country to recognize West Germany, the first to join the International Monetary Fund, and the first to receive an American President, Richard Nixon. Ceauşescu's role in thawing relations between Peking and Washington has earned him the gratitude of both China and the U.S. Nixon has promised to obtain most favored nation status for Rumanian trade, and Ceauşescu recently became the first East European leader to buy U.S. airliners-three Boeing 707s for more than $40 million, including one outfitted for Ceauşescu like Richard Nixon...
...effort to broaden diplomatic ties and make Rumania economically more self-reliant, Ceauşescu has also been courting the Third World to line up cheap raw materials and a ready market. This year he has already visited Pakistan and Iran, and he plans a nine-nation tour of Latin America. The Soviet Union remains Rumania's largest single trading partner, but 47% of Rumania's trade today is with non-Communist countries...
Such a policy is not without its perils. Ceauşescu's emphasis on industrialization has produced a phenomenal annual growth rate of nearly 12%, but Bucharest cupboards are bare. Peasants are so wretchedly poor that some villages have no shops and people live by primitive forms of barter. In recent months, there have been increasing reports of unrest and even strikes...
...answer from Ceauşescu has been an increasingly autocratic rule and the nourishing of a personality cult. For two weeks before Ceauşescu's 55th birthday in January, the entire government press became a giant birthday card with Comrade pictures and Ceauşescu." greetings to "beloved Congratulatory messages were actively solicited, and in they poured, including salutations from Richard Nixon, Willy Brandt and Mao Tse-tung. The personality cult has extended to Ceauşescu's wife Elena, director of a chemical research institute. At her husband's instigation, she was elected...
Ceauşescu warily refuses to allow Soviet troops into Rumania to hold maneuvers. Rumania's own 200,000-man armed forces are supplemented by a crack division of mountain troops and a defensive network of "patriotic guards"-a civilian militia system that could muster as many as 1,000,000 soldiers in the event of an attack. But Ceauşescu's real hope for survival is that no attack ever comes...