Word: escu
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Nowadays Rumanian citizens must contend with food shortages, long lines in shops and a sliding economy that the country's President, Nicolae Ceauşescu, seems ill equipped to reverse. Ceauşescu has vowed, among other gestures, to jail anyone feeding bread to animals...
...multinational banks that have lent funds to Rumania is anxious to see the country declared in default. Rumania's repayment record has been steadily deteriorating in recent years, but default could serve mainly to drive Rumania closer to Moscow, diluting Ceau§escu's longtime role as an independent voice in East bloc foreign affairs. For now, about all Washington can do is refuse new credits, and that it has done. As a way of keeping up pressure for payments of existing debt, Ronald Reagan declined to award $65 million in new agricultural credits...
...leaders to be larger than life and to have accomplishments to match. For example, China's Chairman Mao Tse-tung made a big splash in 1966, when at age 72 he reportedly swam nine miles down the Yangtze River. Then Rumania's Party Boss Nicolae Ceauşescu made hunting history in 1978 by bagging the largest bear ever shot in Europe. Now it appears that Fidel Castro too can boast of a fancy feat. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he is said to have shot down singlehanded an American U-2 plane...
Then there are the in-laws and lesser relatives. Last month the prime ministership was held by Manea Manescu, husband of Ceauşescu's sister Maria. When he retired because of ill health, the job went to another brother-in-law, Ilie Verdeţ husband of Ceauşescu's sister Reghina. Three other family members are Deputy Prime Ministers, including Elena's brother Gheorghe Petrescu; he is in charge of Rumania's arms-making industry...
Among Rumania's 21.5 million citizens, Ceauşescu's family-fostering ways have stirred no great undertow of resentment. After all, nepotism is an old Balkan tradition and may be a small price to pay for a new one that Ceauşescu himself has invented: keeping independent of the Soviets. In both areas Ceausescu has proved himself an adept...