Friday 18 December 2009

Twenty Years On

Romania was not part of the Soviet Bloc. It had a ghastly regime (not least from the point of view of the valiant Byzantine Rite Catholics), but not a Soviet satellite one. In fact, that regime had particularly close ties to Britain. To our shame, but there we are. English and French, rather than Russian, were taught in schools. No Romanian troops participated in putting down the Prague Spring. More than once, the Soviet Union came to the brink of invading Romania. There was absolutely no question of giving back Moldavia, which is now the Romanian-speaking western part of the cut-and-shunt state of Moldova.

Which bring us to the National Salvation Front, overthrowers of Ceausescu, and originators of the present political class in Romania. Their objection to Ceausescu was not that he was pro-Soviet. It was that he was anti-Soviet. They emerged out of the Moscow-backing, because Moscow-backed, faction within the Communist Party. In 1989, the Soviet Union still had two years left to go, and few were those who thought that it would collapse entirely.

When a kangaroo court convicted and executed the Ceausescus for the "genocide" of 34 people and for daring to throw parties at their house on major holidays, it was not just the beginning of dodgy "genocide" convictions: of García Meza Tejada for fully eight people, of Pinochet for under a hundred, of Mengistu in absentia, of his opponents even including aid workers, and of Kambanda without trial, with Milosovic never actually convicted at all. It was also, as it turned out, the last great triumph of the Soviet Union, taking out a man who was vicious and brutal in himself (like García Meza, or Pinochet, or Mengistu), but who was nevertheless a dedicated opponent of Soviet power. Those who took him out have run Romania ever since.

The last great triumph? Well, perhaps not. New Labour may be full of old Trots, and any number of them may have gravitated towards Cameron. But it is also full of the old stalwarts of the Communist Party itself and of its fellow-travelling faction in, but never of, the Labour Party. Cameron is heavily dependent on Demos, the Communist Party stay-behind organisation. We all know both about Peter Mandelson's past and about his future plans. "The National Salvation Front" was how New Labour saw itself in its early days. Clearly, it still does.

2 comments:

  1. You will find that most of Moldavia is already part of Romania. Indeed the capital of the principality of Moldavia - Iasi - was the first capital of the modern Romanian state and its prince its first king.

    Moldavia suffered from partitions in the late 18th-early 19th century. Russia made off with Bessarabia and the Austrians with Buckovina. Both were reunited with Moldavia after WWI along with the annexation of Transylvania and the Banat.

    Then the Soviets took northern Buckovina (now in the Ukraine) and the reannexed Bessarabia.

    Russian was taught in Romania until Ceaucescu took over. Indeed Stalin tried to Slavicise Romania by meddling by proxy with the national language - most notably Romania became Rumania for a period thanks to this meddling.

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  2. "You will find that most of Moldavia is already part of Romania."

    Precisely. So what about the rest of it? It would be easily done if the claim over Transnistria could be given up. No one in Moldavia really wants Transnistria, but it doesn't seem to be up to the people on the ground.

    "Russian was taught in Romania until Ceaucescu took over"

    Precisely my point.

    "Romania became Rumania for a period thanks to this meddling"

    Which is why I never use it.

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