Word: escu
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Indulging his fondness for state visits once again, Rumania's maverick Communist ruler Nicolae Ceauşescu last week was in the middle of a 17-day, eight-nation tour of Africa and the Middle East. One thing he surely spent little worrying about was his political base back home. In his absence there was hardly an important area of national life that was not watched over by some relative he had placed in a top position over the years...
...Ceauşescu himself holds an impressive number of the levers of power in Rumania. Since he became Communist Party boss in 1965, the brusque and stocky onetime shoemaker has not only had himself designated President of the Republic and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces but also chairman of the State Council and the Defense Council...
...Ceauşescu's five brothers, Ilie is a major general, Ion is a deputy minister of agriculture, Marin is a counsel at the Rumanian embassy in Vienna, and Florea is a senior editorial writer for the party newspaper, Scinteia. His brother Nicolae (in Rumania, brothers sometimes have the same first name) is consul-general in Kiev...
American-made Kent cigarettes, in their familiar white package, have become a form of alternative currency in President Nicolae Ceauşescu's Socialist Republic. Diplomats and foreign visitors use them as tips or to consummate business as well as sexual deals. Nor do the cigarettes immediately go up in smoke. Instead, they are traded back and forth by Rumanians, who prize them as a luxury item. The street price is three times the $1.10 cost per pack in the special dollar shops run for foreigners. "It's a startling feature of life here," says one Western diplomat...
...should Ceauşescu be sniping so earnestly at Moscow just now? Some West German analysts, noting a cryptic Ceausescu reference to "counterrevolutionary elements" being stirred up elsewhere "to rise against their governments," speculate that he may have uncovered a Kremlin-backed plot against him. Whatever the cause, Ceauşescu's performance has been popular in Rumania, which probably cannot divert more resources to its military without further straining a weak economy that already produces the East bloc's lowest standard of living...