Ion Iliescu : Is Communism, Like Romania’s Vampire, Dead In Its Coffin?

Ion Iliescu’s visit to New York took Romania-watchers by surprise. Ostensibly, his objective was to participate in the U.N. children’s summit. However, the Romanian president addressed the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday, outlining Romania’s policies and taking pains to assure the West that here spoke a partisan of real and undoctrinaire democracy.

In the context of Romania, the most hesitant and yet boisterous of all the fledgling East European democracies, Iliescu, now 60, is himself unique. A former party activist who was secretary for youth in 1968, he quarreled with Nicolae Ceausescu at the time over the tyrant’s ever-shrinking tolerance for experiment. As a result, he was vengefully kept in minor positions for almost 20 years--until he emerged at the fore of the popular explosion that overwhelmed Ceausescu last Christmas. That curriculum assured him of two constituencies, as loyal as they are opposed: those who fear him as an ex-Red, though now publicly repentant; and those who praise him as the past and current reformer.

In May, Iliescu was elected president with 85% of the popular vote. But, almost immediately, his record was spotted by the “miners’ affair”: After weeks of anti-government demonstrations in Bucharest’s University Square, workers loyal to Iliescu’s party arrived in Bucharest to confront the demonstrators, most of them young. Violence on both sides resulted in at least six deaths. A direct effect of the events was the temporary suspension of loans to Romania by the United States and the European Community.

Meanwhile, the nation’s economy is in deep crisis. There are big shortages and vast stoppages of work. In Transylvania, there have been bloody clashes between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians. Rumor has it that ex-members of the sinister Securitate, the special police, are inflaming the passions and sabotaging even a government perceived as too slow about change. Fair or not, the impression created is that communism, like the vampire in the Romanian legend, is not quite dead in its coffin.

Iliescu obviously came to the United States to try to dispel that impression. Twenty years ago, Iliescu was a beacon for a hopeful youth. Then the beacon was forcibly extinguished. Now, he seems vigorous but weathered. Iliescu has a sense of humor, a rare thing among Romanians. Married but childless, he dotes on his nephews and nieces.

Question: We have read much and seen much about Romanian children suffering from AIDS, due to transfusions with infected blood performed under the Ceausescu regime. Is AIDS contained in Romania, or is it threatening to become an epidemic?

Answer: It’s not an epidemic, we only have a few hundred cases. However, it is the most tragic of Ceausescu’s legacies. Child care in his time was minimal. One of the first measures we took as a provisional government was to raise the salaries of the staff working in hospitals with AIDS patients.

Visiting two such hospitals, I met some young English men and women working there as volunteers, an example of European cooperation which the Romanians are experiencing as a total novelty.

Q: Unfortunately, nine months after the revolution, the country still looks fratricidally divided. Why is it that in Romania confrontation rather than dialogue seems to be the way of doing things?

A: To answer that, I’d like to ask the readers of the Times to make an effort of imagination. Whatever horror stories they heard about the Ceausescu era, they should multiply them by four. Thus they might get a more accurate picture of how degraded the country was before the revolution.

The problem with Ceausescu’s regime was that it punished any and all attempts of the system to reform itself from inside. The cork was pushed in so hard that only an explosion could throw it out again. The explosion happened, but it brought out with it a lot of extremism. At this point, a lot of people are both paranoid and angry, and the economic crisis keeps them so. Romanians are clashing with Hungarians, the young protest loudly against the old apparatus, demonstrations turn into fights and panics.

It’s an unfortunate state of affairs, but however much we are suspected of not having lost the reflexes created under communism, we don’t have any brutal or even substantial powers to use. There are a hundred registered political parties, and many people with a short fuse. We are constantly trying to appease our critics, and feel in some measure disoriented.

Q: A few months ago, one TV detective series featured villains who were Securitate agents loose in America. Hollywood’s rogues’ gallery used to cast Romanians as vampires; now it casts them as Securitate. Joking aside, where are the members of the Securitate now? Are they out of work, doing other things, in hiding? Do they still have weapons?

A: As an institution, they were abolished in December, 1989--one of the first decisions of the council of the FSN (National Liberation Front). Its leaders were arrested and tried, while the low-rung operatives were either forced into retreat or fired with three months’ pay. They also had to lay down their weapons. After the Securitate papers were seized, we did the best we could to bring to justice all those involved in torture under the old regime.

Still, we suffer from old paranoias. My own wife asked me, quite recently, “Are you sure that our phones are not tapped any more?”

Q: It’s no easy task to take over a nation so damaged. What made you think you were equipped for the process, and what personal qualities do you think you bring to your office?

A: When I and other people in the FSN decided we had a chance to lead the country--that was between Dec. 22 and 25, when we were still under bullets--I can’t say that I knew how hard it was going to be. It’s hard beyond anyone’s expectations.

But I’d like to be judged by the risk of what we undertook. Most politicians avoid taking over in explosive times; it’s much more profitable to sit out the worst of a crisis.

Q: You speak as someone who came out of the Ceausescu era with his moral side intact. Yet that’s exactly what puzzles me and other Romanians, and many Americans. How can a former Communist become a revolutionary? How can a man raised by the system keep his moral side intact?

A: A French philosopher--unfortunately, I forgot his name--said that whoever has no socialistic ideals before 40 has no soul, but if he clings to them after 40, he has no mind.

The truth is that I had decided that communism didn’t work back in 1971. In 1968, the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. By condemning that invasion, Ceausescu admirably fooled both the West and his own population. Briefly, but no less fervently, I thought he was a true patriot. Then he unlashed Romania’s own mini-Cultural Revolution. Young activists who opposed it--like me--were immediately booted out. I was fired from the leadership of the youth organization in 1971--accused of “intellectualism.”

Q: One could say that you were lucky.

A: I was. Despite the fact that some will never forgive me for believing in the left once, I had my chance to see firsthand how inefficient communism was at the grass-roots level. For the following 19 years, I was a mid-level activist. If ever my beliefs were reversed, it was then.

Anyway, even if I was not jailed or in internal exile, my disgrace continued. I rose a little administratively, then was again forced to abandon all work with the youth and go back to my profession, hydro-energetics. Then I was called to run the state Technical Publishing House. I suppose I learned some humility. Yet all that time I had more power than before, because I could have some efficiency, even if it was on a completely local level. Those who stayed around Ceausescu lost all their efficiency and initiative. They were incredibly deformed. What was most striking was how all, in the presence of that egotistical machine, totally lost their common sense.

Q: The ironies of history. In 1971, you were “booted out,” as you say, from the leadership of the youth league. At that time, in comparison with the rest of the regime, you were a reformer. For the last few months, as a freely elected president, you’ve had active opposition from the youth of Romania. They accuse you of being too slow.

A: I think the criticisms of the youth are a great political barometer.

Q: That’s nice philosophy, but right now in Romania there are student leaders being tried for occupying University Square back in June. They were finally dislodged from the square by that tide of “miners” invading Bucharest and going on a rampage.

A: I have to protest a simplification. Both sides went on a rampage. And not all the students were students.

Q: What about student leader Marian Munteanu--beaten by the miners, and then also arrested?

A: Marian Munteanu has been freed. He is not on trial, but is being investigated for disruption of the public order, and so are a number of miners. On the other hand, after Munteanu’s fiery speeches, a number of people stormed the Bucharest prefecture of police and the TV studios. The police, totally intimidated, did nothing to contain them. The government had been elected for just three weeks, and before the miners came to town there were already police cars and buildings on fire. In that atmosphere, is it inconceivable that some people feared a coup d’etat?

Q: You mean to say that this was a clash between two political leanings and the miners were not bused to Bucharest by the government?

A: They were not--absolutely not--bused in by the government, or called in by me personally. I did make the mistake of applauding their presence, and had to retract myself when the violence doubled instead of decreasing. But I never called them to come and storm Bucharest.

At any rate, I think we all learned our lesson. It makes better sense to promote dialogue. The Parliament and the free press are our first institutions of dialogue.

Q: At this time, Eastern Europe is engaged in its greatest transformation ever. From ox carts, it wants to jet over into the 21st Century. Is that possible, and if you think it is, what’s your agenda?

A: I’d like to refer to it in more modest terms. It’s a painful transition. Our minds have been robotized for so long. There are two solutions, I think. One is a new relationship with the other Eastern European countries. Learning from each other’s mistakes and sharing our homemade know-how. The other is opening the doors to Western participation in our economies, which also means in our cultures. We are for joint ventures of any possible sort. This is the joint-venture era--that’s how I would define the new order mentioned by President Bush.

Q: A leader that loves his country also promotes it. Mikhail Gorbachev promoted the Soviet Union better than anyone since Catherine the Great. What about promoting Romania?

A: For Romania, in particular, that means tourism. We are a small country with great beaches, the Carpathian mountains, the Danube delta, which is an ecological wonder, and all the cultural curiosities of Transylvania. A lot, separated by small distances. But we have no good roads and hotels. We want to invite foreign capital to build a new network of freeways.

Q: During the Persian Gulf crisis, Romania meticulously aligned itself with the United States. In August, for example, Romania chaired the U.N. Security Council, supporting all resolutions condemning the invasion of Kuwait. That kind of “cooperation” is a first. What else can you tell us about it?

A: It’s nice, for once, to be on the same side. We can’t condone invasions since we’ve been invaded so many times. On the other hand, we had an active trade relation with Iraq, which was our main oil supplier. With the crisis, the oil supplies stopped and so did other payments. We might lose as much as $3 billion--a lot for a country our size.

But remember the Romanian saying: An honest face is an expensive virtue.

Q: This is your first visit to America. What are your impressions?

A: I can’t even say I’ve seen New York. However, I think I breathed a certain spirit that confirms the America I carried in my mind: a sense of experimentation and daring. For Romanians, America is the most inspiring nation.