Category Archives: Authoritarianism

Hungary: From Communism to Democracy to Fascism?

January 14, 20262025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Fascism, Hungary, The Sleep of Reasonmeanderer007

Ever since we signed up for the tour of the Balkans, tour without adequate thought as I have said, I have thinking about Hungary? Why would a country that came so close to a successful revolt against Soviet Union domination in 1956 that it became for a while the darling of the west, now, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and Hungary became a democracy not very long ago, be sliding back into autocracy? Hungarians know what Communism was like? How and why could this happen? Why would they allow it to happen? These are the questions that have haunted me and for which I have sought an answer, or at least an insight. I never have answers, who am I kidding? I just get more questions.

It seems like such a long journey: from Communism to Democracy to Fascism, but Hungary seems to have moved there in a flash. Not that is completely fascist yet, but it sure seems to headed in that disturbing direction. To me it seems like that is the journey Hungary has embarked upon under the direction of its populist leader Viktor Orbán. But is that really such a long journey? I actually think not. After all, communists and fascists agree on one very important thing—democracy is bad; autocracy is good. It is a movement from extremism on the left communism, to democracy and then to extremism on right namely fascism.

It is actually a very short journey from communism to fascism. Communism began with a dream of universal brotherhood of man—i.e. from each according to his means to each according to his needs. A beautiful dream that turned into a nightmare. As Max Eastman, said, communism was “the God that failed”. The dream curdled from hope to violence. Lenin may have been the cook that switched the recipe when the proletariat, working people, gave up the hopes of freedom and justice in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. When the communist leaders crushed the dreams of fellow feeling in their citizens the dreams of the proletariat turned inward and their hate and pain transformed them into wolves instead.

When there is no longer room in the heart for empathy, it dies and kills part of us and the result is, as the singer song-writer Martyn Joseph said, “the good in us is dead.” Joseph feared would happen in that other Balkan state, Kosovo. What was left there were vicious dogs snarling and biting each other. And the brotherhood of man was given up as an empty dream. The best in them was dead. Leaving an empty burnt-out husk, incapable of love, empathy or fellow feeling. Only a corpse remained. That is the power of hate. It is as transformative as the power of love but in the opposite direction.

A couple of decades later, the world was left with another leader, Donald Trump who as I have said before, has the empathy of a turnip. His hatred turned a nation of brave men and women into a nation that feared itself, and found a scapegoat, the immigrants, who could be dispatched by a crowd in a packed arena at the 2020 Republican National Convention chanting gleefully, “Deportation Now.” All of this while holding signs underneath smiling faces that read “Mass Deportation.” This looked to me like the brownshirts of Nazi Germany who viciously turned on their Jewish neighbours. That was how the American MAGA crowd turned on their brown immigrant neighbours, demanding they be deported or sent to Latin American jails for torture. When your empathy is shredded what else could you do but shout for joy around calls to “lock them up?” The ugly ideology of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht had taken over in America. To me it felt viscerally, like there was a direct lineal line of descendant, from the Night of Broken glass in Germany against Jews led by the Nazi Party’s SS troops and aided by the hateful Hitler youth and then ordinary, but rancid, Germans to those American Republicans. The bullies again were in control, only this time in America.

Night Walk in Budapest

January 12, 20262025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracymeanderer007

It was our last night in Budapest before flying home. Once again, Christiane stayed in the hotel while I meandered along both sides of the river. This time I went at night. And it was sensational.

Night photography is tricky and really requires a tripod, and mine was not working. Yet I wanted to photograph some of the beautiful buildings at night. I would have to rely on luck and the monitor at the back of the camera to give me a rough idea how things would look. Using brains was out of the question.

Right across the river from our hotel we had a lovely view of Buda Castle or the Royal castle which I had photographed during the day. It is a magnificent structure.

The Chain Bridge is also beautiful at night as it as during the day. In fact, it is more beautiful. Our hotel was very close to it. Here I crossed to the Buda side of the Danube from the Pest side where our hotel was located.

Budapest’s Chain Bridge is one of its most iconic features. Linking one side of the city to the other and spanning the Danube, the bridge opened in 1849 and is the oldest permanent bridge on the Danube River in Hungary. Stone lions guard the bridge, and you can see it walking or driving. I saw it a number of times walking and twice driving across it. Everyone should see this bridge during the day and again at night.

I got one last look at Mattias Church from near the Chain Bridge. I thought it looked spectacular at night. Especially on a night when the clouds looked ominous. After that I continued on the Buda side of the river towards the Parliament buildings.

I enjoyed the evening walk immensely. I had no fear of thugs. Thug should fear me! There are thugs in Hungary, but the scariest kind wear business suits and enjoy praise and worship from American conservatives.

I marvelled at the Parliament buildings at night. I just wished the parliament was as good as its building. Unfortunately, Hungary’s democratic Parliament was increasingly tolerating a leader, Viktor Orbán, who has been showing strong autocratic tendencies during his second term in office.

Orbán, like Hitler he was democratically elected. Also, like Trump of course. But ever since Orbán was elected the second time, he has been undercutting the democratic process for his own personal benefit. Again, like Trump. Some like Bill Maher Trump will use his power to secure for himself and unconstitutional 3^rd term. This is certainly not impossible.

Those of us who live in democratic societies and who enjoy the protections and benefits it offers must be alert to the challenges democracy faces, particularly in the current state of the world, have to be alert to those challenges and must protect it. Or we will lose it. It really is that simple.

In recent years, Viktor Orbán has become the political darling of the American right, much to my complete surprise. Why has that happened? How could this happen in a country like Hungary which had been under the control of an autocratic communist regime for so long after the Second World War? How could the people now acquiesce to losing democratic rights so soon? This question has bothered me throughout our trip through the Balkans. This night it puzzled me as I walked along the beautiful Danube River and photographed Hungary’s beautiful Parliament that sadly was not protecting its democracy?

Then, secondly, how could so many Americans, and to a lesser extent Canadians, fall under the sway of autocratic leaders like Orbán? Conservatives always claim to be strong defenders of democracy, at least until the last few years. To me it was incomprehensible that they would lose interest in democracy, but that seems widespread. Why has this happened? I still wanted to explore this question. After all, if it happened in Hungary it could happen in the United States or Canada? It is a sad fact that many young people have lost faith in democracy. Perhaps this is because the older generation, has for too long been using the levers of political power to benefit themselves at the expense of the younger generation who is getting screwed. I believe this. Many of my friends are not convinced by my arguments but I think evidence is everywhere. Why else is education so much more expensive than it was in my day? Why do tax laws favor the old so much?

This is a view of Parliament from the chain bridge.

I thought about crazy things like that as I was walking down the Danube shoreline that beautiful last night in Budapest, and frankly for quite a while after returning home. It is still bothering me.

Budapest was both good and bad, but it sure was great to see and learn from. I would love to go back for a longer stay.

When I got back to the hotel, Christiane and I set our alarm clocks for 5:30 am. This would not even leave us enough time for breakfast in the morning. Ouch. We were flying home. Flying is the worst part of travel. And this flight back home was no exception to that rule.

The Brutes of War

December 10, 20252025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Croatia, Extremismmeanderer007

Serbs were often painted as brutes. But as usual the story is more complicated than that. Name calling is just another example of polarization. Rarely, do simple stories tell the whole story.

“In Yugoslavia, they [Serbs] were a protected constitutional nation. In independent Croatia, they were reduced to a national minority in a state with a genocidal past. Without a state of their own, the Serbs repeat over and over, they face extermination again. The Serbian war in Bosnia is designed to give them such a state by providing a unified corridor from Serbia proper, connecting up the Serbian lands in western, central, and southern Croatia. Without such a corridor, the Central Serbs know they will not survive, and until such a corridor is secure they live from day to day in a state of armed paranoia.”

Serbians always thought they were getting a bad rap from others. They did what every other country does, they claimed, and they were punished for it. They felt they have been scapegoats and misidentified. They felt they were not worse than any other country and yet the world castigated them as brutes and war criminals, while letting their enemies go free. Life really was more nuanced than that.

Yet life was in shambles after the war. It was chaos. Disorder on steroids. Or maybe cocaine. Rule of law was now a chimera, or even less.

Michael Ignatieff put it this way:

The war zones of eastern Slavonia, and Vukovar in particular leave behind an unforgettable impression of historical retrogression. Graveyards where Jews and Ruthenes, German, Croats, and Serbs once were buried together now lie desecrated by bombs of both sides. …There is little gasoline, so the villages have returned to the era before the motorcar. Everyone goes about on foot. Old peasant women forage for fuel in the woods, because there is no heating oil. Food is scarce, because the men are too busy fighting to tend the field. In the desolate wastes in front of the bombed-out-high rise flats, survivors dig at the ground with hoes. Everyman goes armed. No one ventures beyond the village. No one trusts anyone they have not known all their lives. Late twentieth-century nationalism has delivered part of the European continent back to the time before nation-state, to the chaos of late feudal civil war.

A week spent in Servian Krajina is a week spent inside a nationalist paranoia so total that when you finally cross the last Serbian checkpoint and turn on the radio, and find an aria from Puccini playing, and look out of your window and see wet fields in the rain, you find yourself uncoiling like a tightly wound spring absurdly surprised to discover that a world of innocent beauty still exists.”

Then guess what happened after the bloody war, with the corpses, mutilated bodies, raped women, and shell-shocked soldiers? The land so bitterly fought over is given back to Croatia in the peace treaty! What was it all for? Absolutely nothing of course.

In his travels in Serbia after the war, Ignatieff was struck by the Serbians whining about unfair treatment from the west. This was a persistent and relentless theme. At first when they saw he was a writer they refused to talk. They always refused to talk. As they say,

“This, I learn, is part of the ritual style of Serbian nationalism itself. The dance has its opening quadrille: we won’t talk, the West never understands; we despise you; you tell nothing but lies; then they start talking and never stop. Ask anybody a simple question and you get that telltale phrase: ‘You have to understand our history…” Twenty minutes later and you are still hearing about King Lazar, the Turks, and the Battle of Kosovo. This deep conviction that no one understands them, coupled with the fervent, unstoppable desire to explain and justify themselves, seemed to define the style of every conversation I had in Belgrade.”

The stories go back hundreds of years. That repeated itself over and over again in Serbia:

“…the same rituals repeat themselves. People violently and vehemently refuse to talk, only to start into a stream of Serbian self-justification that begins with their immemorial struggle against the Turks [hundreds of years ago] and concludes with their defense of Serbian Bosnia against the Muslim fundamentalists [in the 1990s]. Along the way, the invective sweeps up anti-Serbian crimes of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Tito into rhetorical flow as muddy as a spring torrent.”

No one owns up to what they have done. The reckless slaughter and supporting demagogues. No someone else is always at fault in post war Serbia. After all someone must have brought the deluge upon their heads. It can’t be them or their heroes. As Ignatieff said, after the Serbs had to line up at stores and banks because they were suffering under inflation of 200 per cent per month. Many of the complainers were weary pensioners and other hapless souls who picked the losing side in the war. Not that there were any winning sides of course.

Ignatieff described the case this way:

You might have thought such queues would be full of anti- Slobodan Milošević [leader of Serbia] grumbling. Belgrade however, after all, never voted for him and has always resented its demotion from a world capital of the non-aligned movement, as it was under Tito, to an isolated, embargoed, Balkan provincial capital. Yet again, all the anger that might be directed at the West—at Churchill, at Mrs. Thatcher for having supported the Croats, at the Americans for aiding the Bosnian Muslims, and so on.

The populist dictators always manage to deflect blame from themselves to others, no matter how richly they deserve it. All of them from Hitler to Trump have learned this trick well. And their loyal followers are always eager to blame the scapegoat instead of the real villain. Scapegoats such as immigrants. Or Nazis. Or the neighbour next door. Scapegoats are always the authoritarians best friend.

Little Siberia: The Bulgarian Gulag

November 8, 20252025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps, Historymeanderer007

This smoke stack was not, as far as I know, part of a concentration camp. but when I saw it I wondered about it.

On the CBC radio show Ideas, Nahlah Ayed also interviewed Krasmina Butseva, a visual artist, researcher and a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London. She was another member of the team working on The Neighbours as a response to the Bulgarian Gulag. She explained what happened when the installation was first staged for the first time in Sofia, Bulgaria. Most of the people who visited it spent the most time in the kitchen. That really felt like home to them.

The Bulgarian gulag functioned between 1945 and 1962, primarily. But it was never completely closed.

The Bulgarian gulag was modelled on the Soviet gulag. It’s the same kind of principle. People are sent to a forced labor camp without a trial, without a sentence. They were sent indefinitely in other words. Bulgaria became known after 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as “little Siberia.”

And the living conditions were excruciating. There was forced labor, there were hardships, there was disease, starvation. And of course, in some cases death. Not systemic murder as in Nazi Germany but many perished in the horrid conditions of the Bulgarian camps.

It’s a very painful experience. Bulgaria is a country of about 7 million people, 110,000 square kilometers. There were about 40 forced labor camp complexes in Bulgaria, so about 80 individual sites. I was shocked by the number.

Krasmina Butseva explained that forced labour occurred entirely without trials. Once Bulgaria was absorbed into the Soviet Block the country was quickly Stalinized and that meant extra-judicial internment and severe repression. Authoritarians always see courts and law as an unnecessary restraint. Usually, it meant no specific sentence. They were imprisoned at the pleasure of the regime until shadowy officials decided the prisoner could be released usually without explanation. Absolute power never has to explain.

The first question of course, is who were these people who were sent to the Gulags of Bulgaria? According to Butseva, the inmates were “enemies. Perceived enemies, alleged enemies. But there are many different categories.” In most cases the victims were part of the left in Bulgaria. Political dissidents on the non-Communist left. You might have thought a communist regime would pick on the right, but that is not how it worked. They imprisoned more on the left. That shows me what I always thought, the communist were more fascists than socialists.

Others victims included social democrats, anarchists, members of the agrarian party. Often Trotskyites, and in time other Communists who fell out favor with the party. The regime protected their own so long as they remained loyal to those in control of the party. Again, as we are learning in North American political leaders with an authoritarian bent value nothing more than loyalty. Next, some of the victims who were “invited to stay” included peasants who lived on the land and became “enemies” if they no longer supported those in control. Their defiance made them “enemies.” If they refused to give up their farms to the collective, they became enemies. Rebels could not be tolerated.

Non-conformists were also enemies. These were people who defied social norms and included men who let their hair grow long, listened to western music, liked dancing. Young girls often wore miniskirts and included those who wore hair styles the party elite did not favor. They were seen as political opponents. Then there were ethnic “enemies” like Muslims and Roma people.

Butseva explained that the last wave of Muslim and Roma were sent to the gulag between 1984 and 1987 when communist Bulgaria interned about 500 Muslim men to the camp for forced labour. They used many camps but the one used the most was called Belene Island located in the Danube River. Unfortunately, I never got to see it. The organizers did not think tourists would be interested in former concentration camps, or more likely, the current government did not want to talk about the camps.

One thing surprised me. This is what Lilia Topouzova said about it:

“When you visit the site of the former camp, this beautiful island, Belene Island, on the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania, I mean, it’s a striking place. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. And the sound of it is beautiful as well.”

I love beautiful islands, but I this one I did not get to see, or even hear about.

The communist government of Bulgaria used camp internment to get rid of opponents when they were not able to use traditional judicial means because they could not charge them with ordinary crimes. For example, if they could not find sufficient evidence to charge them in the criminal system, they could intern them without the inconvenience of a trial. If people did nothing wrong, the regime could use that process to punish or control them anyway. That’s how autocracies work. And around the world it seems government are turning in that direction. Not good.

Some people are bored with history. I think its important to learn about things like concentration camps, even though they were unpleasant and we were on a holiday, but I hope if we learn more we won’t make such mistakes again.

Bulgaria’s Gulag

November 3, 20252025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Concentration Campsmeanderer007

“Gulag” was a word used to describe the brutal concentration camps of Soviet Russia.

I listened to a fascinating CBC Ideas Podcast entitled “Voices of a Silenced history: Inside Bulgaria’s Gulag,” on a topic dear to my heart. The topic was the efforts of those in power to try to drive history to ignore what they don’t like and twist the truth to paint themselves in a better light. This is a common occurrence. Currently this is what the American conservative movement is doing vigorously, thanks to the endorsements of the president of that country, who has many truths about himself that he wants to keep hidden.

Lilia Topouzova is a documentary filmmaker and a historian at the University of Toronto whose work is focused on the afterlives of political violence and the relationship between remembering and forgetting. As it happens, CBC Ideas aired this story just before we were travelling to Bulgaria. My ears perked up when I heard that.

Topouzova felt she was the perfect person to tell this story, since she was born and raised in Bulgaria. This is how she introduced herself:

“In order to get anyone to tell you a story, you need to encounter the person. You need to see the person. So when you’re making a film in Eastern Europe, or when you’re conducting research as a scholar in Eastern Europe, you need to be able to A, drink, B, smoke, and C, eat a lot.

And so, you know, maybe as a younger person, I was good at all these three things. But more than anything, I think it’s about also letting people know who you are.”

Lilia Topouzova has some amazing standards. She said that she never records anything with people until she has spent at least a year with them. She was also very sensitive to people who had experienced trauma, and many of the people she interviewed had definitely experienced trauma.

For 2 decades Topouzova has been studying things the Bulgarian establishment wants to keep in the dark. They do not want any light shone upon them, much like many American conservatives do not want to hear anything about racism in their perfect country, nor exploitation of labour, and much like many Canadians don’t want to hear anything about what happened in Canada’s Residential Schools, at least no more than they have already heard, which is too much. Power does not like to hear anything that might besmirch its reputation. That is why to them ignorance is sacred in the words of James Baldwin.

Topouzova has been studying something I never heard of before, the Bulgarian Gulag, which according to Nahlah Ayed, the CBC host of Ideas, is “a history that has been deliberately silenced.”

After the communists from Russia took over the government of Bulgaria in 1944 they began to eliminate their political opponents as best they could. That is what authoritarians like to do, as we are now finding out. They started that right after their coup d’état in 1944. The new Bulgarian government implemented a policy of terror and intimidation across the country. In fact, the mass purge organized by Bulgarian authorities was the most brutal among all USSR satellite countries. By autumn that year, between 20,000-40,000 people were murdered or imprisoned without any trial. They were, among others, members of local authorities, notables, teachers, Orthodox priests and traders.

Officials at all levels were expelled with justifications ranging from retribution for past offences and the “fight against fascism”. Again, sadly, this now sounds very familiar to us even in North America. Some of the officials associated with the previous government were arrested as early as September 9 1944. As we have learned recently, authoritarians or ‘wanne’ be authoritarians, like to impose revenge on their enemies. In Bulgaria, many of them were deported to the USSR where they could be dealt with expeditiously. About 130 “show trials” as we have come to call them, were held from December 1944 to June 1945. They were called “People’s Tribunals” to make them sound innocuous. Many of the so-called “judges” had no legal education or experience. About 10,000 people were accused, including members of the ruling Bulgarian dynasty, royal councillors, most of the cabinet ministers of the 1941 government, members of parliament, officers, policemen, city mayors, businessmen, lawyers, judges, journalists, and so on. About 2,700 of them were sentenced to death, more than 1,200 to life imprisonment and about 1,600 to long-term imprisonment.

Concentration Camps

November 2, 2025Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps, Tyranny and Fascismmeanderer007

Some people think concentration camps were confined to the Nazis. These are people who are bored with history.

Many historians, including Hannah Arendt believed that concentration camps were invented by the British during the Second Boer War in South African. Of course, the British did not have the systematic machinery of murder which Nazis did, but they had concentration camps, and maybe even invented them. Some people, like me, think the camps were a logical extension of colonial rule, because of the powerful belief in white supremacy by most European countries.

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand camps, that we would call concentration camps. Adolf Hitler came to power by legal and democratic means. In 1932 he ran for the presidency but was defeated by the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. Yet he had gained a lot of popularity. In 1932 the Nazis became the largest party in the German Reichstag, but did not have the absolute majority. Traditionally the leader of the party who held the most seats in the Reichstag was appointed Chancellor, but the President von Hindenburg was reluctant at first to appoint Hitler. After negotiations in 1933 von Hindenburg acquiesced and appointed Hitler Chancellor. Hitler was still not an absolute dictator at that time.

When the German Reichstag was set on fire later in 1933, Hitler blamed the communists without any evidence to that effect and as a result convinced von Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree which severely curtailed the liberties of and rights of Germans and thereafter Hitler used the fire as a pretext to eliminate his enemies (political opponents). in effect he said, only he could save Germany. Sound familiar?

Then he argued that he should be given even greater powers to curtail his opposition and proposed the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave the German government the power to override individual rights and also vested the Chancellor (Hitler) with emergency powers to pass and enforce laws, without parliamentary oversight, much like Donald Trump has been doing in the United States since his 2^nd election in 2024. After that law was passed, Hitler had de facto dictatorial powers and almost immediately ordered the construction of the first of German’s concentration camps at Dachau for communists and other political opponents. After von Hindenburg’s death Hitler merged the chancellery with the presidency into what he liked to be called, the Führer (“leader”). That completed his rise to absolute power.

At first the camps were run by the Sturmabteilung, the original Nazi paramilitary organization. Later they were run by the SS. At first most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on the Nazis collected others as prisoners, including “habitual criminals,” “asocials,” and of course, Jews.

Himmler, one of Hitler’s lieutenants, called for a war against the “organized elements of sub-humanity” that included communists, socialists, Jews, Freemasons, and criminals. Hitler secured his appointment as Chief of German Police in 1936.

Bulgaria, an ally of Germany in the World War II built and operated its own concentration camps and labor camps, mainly for political opponents, though some Roma were also imprisoned. As well when Germany requested Bulgaria send its imprisoned Jews to Germany they complied with that request. These camps, such as Ribaritsa, were established by the government to intern individuals considered “politically dangerous.”

Romanian Revolution

October 22, 20252025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianismmeanderer007

This building reminded me of the transition from communism to “original democracy.”

The Revolution in Romania did not happen all at once. It really started in the city of Brasov where we had spent 2 days. At first it represented a revolt against Nicolae Ceaușescu’s economic policies. On the morning of November 15, 1987, a local elections day, workers at a local truck manufacturing plant in Brasov led to about 20,000 workers refusing to work and marching toward the communist party headquarters. There, what had been claims for wages turned into shouts for “Down with Ceaușescu!”, “Down with Communism!” They even chanted anthems of the 1848 Revolution that not everyone had forgotten about. For example, “Down with the Dictatorship” and “We want bread.” These were brave actions in the face of communist dictatorship.

Ceaușescu had started to curb food and energy consumption for the good of the country and to reduce workers’ wages. None of these measures were popular of course with working people. 61% of people in labor participated in industry in Brasov. The economic decline of factories in eastern Europe in the mid-1980s hit Brasov particularly hard and led to the collapse of the consumer market. It started when Ceaușescu decided he had to divert payments intended for food production to paying the country’s debts. The state began to ration food stuffs.

The protesting workers from Brasov were joined by ordinary people from the city, and the combined mob sacked the communist headquarters building and city hall “throwing into the square portraits of Ceaușescu, and food from the well-stocked canteen.” In a time of drastic food shortages, protesters were particularly angered to find buildings that had been prepared for official festivities with food in abundance in order to celebrate the local communist election victory, which of course was a foregone conclusion. So the protesters celebrated with a massive bonfire of party records and propaganda burned for hours in the city square.

By dusk, Securitate forces and the military surrounded the city center and disbanded the revolt by force. Though no one was killed, some 300 protesters were arrested. Sounds a bit like cities in the US doesn’t it? Meanwhile protesters were being detained and tortured by state “investigators.” The communist party decided to downplay the rebellion as “isolated cases of hooliganism, rather than rebellion so the sentences were relatively light.

Though the Brașov Rebellion did not directly lead to revolution, it dealt a serious blow to the Ceaușescu regime, and its confidence in the pliability of the trade unions. Historian Dennis Deletant referred to the incident as demonstrating “Ceaușescu’s inability to heed the warning signs of increasing labor unrest, plunging blindly forward with the same [economic] measures, seemingly indifferent to their consequences.”

The Brașov Rebellion showed there was growing discontent among workers against the Ceaușescu regime, even though he believed the people loved him and he could do anything he wanted and get away with it. It was a precursor to the popular uprisings that would bring down the regime and Communism in Romania only two years later, after the fall of the Soviet Empire.

In 1989 when the massive power of the Soviet Communist party began to crumble thanks to the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev, anti-government demonstrations in Romania arose in December of 1989. These were heady times. It seemed like a whole new world order was being ushered in. Around the world people like me, were excited about the burst for freedom behind the Iron Curtain . A communist regime that seemed invincible, as autocratic regimes always seem, at least until they are not, was losing its grip on power. What would happen next?

Things were so bad in the country that many people had to resort to begging in the streets for food. Sort of like people do in cities of the west today. Amazingly, Ceaușescu thought the people still loved him. That was how out of touch he was. The people hated him. Ceaușescu was told to give up power but he resisted, until finally the people resisted and turned on him and his wife and the Communist regime which had been so powerful people thought it would last forever. But dictatorships never last forever. Eventually they fall. And when they do it is usually with a crash.

In Romania hundreds of Romanians were shot and killed or injured. When it was revealed that Ceaușescu was responsible, massive unrest spread through the country. When the demonstrations reached Bucharest, it became known as the Romanian Revolution. And that is what it was. In fact, it was the only overthrow of a communist regime in the course of the revolutions of 1989.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital in a helicopter, but were soon captured after the armed forces turned on them. When the military turns on its autocratic leaders that usually spells the end of the regime. And it did exactly that in Romania. Ceaușescu was very quickly tried and convicted of economic sabotage and, amazingly, genocide. His wife was included in the trial as well. As a result, both were sentenced to death and they were immediately executed by a firing squad on December 25, 1989. The regime was toast.

The dictator had absolute power until he had no power. The life of dictators can end abruptly. Until their power evaporates, they are feared and obeyed. After that they are revealed as little men. No longer giant autocrats.

According to Vio, our guide for this part of our trip. Ceaușescu had interfered in everything in the life of the people and as a result ruined the country and paid a heavy price in the end. He paid with his life.

Soon, Romania would have “original democracy.” It is far from perfect, but better than communism and outright autocracy.,

Romania: From World War II to Communism

October 18, 20252025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianismmeanderer007

This building has been called Ceaușescu’s office. Nicolae Ceaușescu was the Communist leader of Romania for many years.

Romania started out in 1941 as an ally of Nazi Germany when it declared war on the Soviet Union. They did not care so much about England or the United States, or lord knows, Canada. Russia was their traditional enemy and their King was a member of a great German family. As a result, taking sides with Germany against Russia made a lot of sense to Romanians.

However, things change, particularly in European international politics. After the defeat of Germany at Stalingrad, Romanian leaders felt the winds of change. In Romania, on August 23 1944, with the Soviet Red Army on the march, Romania’s King Mihai forcibly removed Romania’s Marshal Ion Antonescu from power when he refused to sign an armistice with the Allies of World II. As a result, Romania brazenly switched sides.

Of course, you might wonder what good did it do Romania to switch sides, for Russia, its erstwhile new ally, invaded and took over Romania as soon as the war was over. Romania became part of the Soviet empire. And, Vio, our faithful Romania guide and interpreter on this trip mocked how the Russians since then painted the Romanians as eternal friends of Russia, which, of course was total nonsense. But nothing prevails more relentlessly in international affairs than nonsense.

Less than 3 years after Russia’s takeover of Romania, its monarch, King Mihai was forced to abdicate and vacate the castle. The People’s Republic of Romania—a state of “popular democracy“—was proclaimed. It of course was no democracy at all. It was a communist dictatorship. The newly established communist regime, was led by the Romanian Workers’ Party which quickly consolidated its power through a Stalinist-type policy aimed at suppressing any political opposition and transforming the economic and social structures of the old bourgeois regime into a typical communist regime that bore little resemblance to Marx’s dreams of a workers’ communist paradise.

In 1965 the communist leader of Romania died and after a brief struggle Nicolae Ceaușescu emerged as the head of government. Like so many autocrats, Hitler, Orban, and others included, Ceaușescu turned into an autocrat after enjoying the power which he later did not want to give up. As we have seen recently with Donald Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, it is difficult for some democratically elected leaders to give up their power. It is intoxicating and addictive.

In the early 1960s, the Romanian government began to assert some small degree of independence from Soviet Russian domination. I don’t mean to minimize this. It took courage to resist the Soviet Communist foreign policies. Romania did not abandon its repressive internal policies which it of course called “revolutionary conquests” much like Donald Trump calls his slide into autocracy “greater freedom.” Such camouflaging maneuvers are common with every autocratic regime.

Upon achieving power, Ceaușescu eased restrictions on the press and actually condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that effectively quelled the Prague Spring and his popularity rose spectacularly. That popularity however was very brief.

Soon the communist regime of Romania became totalitarian and was even considered for a while the most repressive in the Eastern bloc. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance and severe repression with human rights abuses being prominently featured in the activities of the regime. He controlled the press absolutely. It is things like this in history that should give all of us pause when we see attempts to control the press as Donald Trump has done flamboyantly in the US without much opposition. These are not innocent maneuvers. They are at the heart of a dangerous path to autocracy and all of us who cherish freedom must be alert to them and oppose them with firmness and vigor. I am constantly amazed at how cavalier Americans have been about such encroachments onto fundamental rights and freedoms. Such actions by Trump, acquiesced to by his Republican cronies, are dangerous.

For a while Ceaușescu was very popular for his efforts to remain independent of Russian foreign policy. But like all good autocrats from Hitler to Trump he grew increasingly authoritarian. That is what authoritarians do. His insistence on his monstrous People’s Palace shown in this photograph is just one example. He foisted it on the people whether they wanted it or not, because he wanted it. Like so many authoritarians, he also liked the grandiose, and insisted on building this People’s Palace, the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon in Washington even though Romania could really not afford it and no one wanted it.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Communist regime of Romania collapsed with startling rapidity. He thought his people loved him. He was wrong. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were the victims of a series of anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe in that inspiring year. After a very quick trial they were found guilty and both shot.

This was not really a good start for what the new regime called “original democracy.”

The Meanderer

The opinions and photos of John E. Neufeld as he meanders through life