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.”