bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2005) — Summer/Fall 2005 // Été/Automne 2005, pp. 25–28
Posthumous publications nearly always arouse a mixture of feelings, including gratitude for an unexpected gift as well as regret that we cannot discuss what we have read with the author. That reaction is especially appropriate with the book from which we publish an extract below, as the author, Peter Roberts, has teasingly mingled real events and people, with which and whom he was personally familiar, with invented situations and imagined characters. The boundaries between fact and fiction are deliberately obscured so as to draw the reader further into the bizarre world of Romania under Nicolae Ceașescu (aided and abetted by his wife, Elena, herself a bogus scholar with an appropriately fictional expertise). The story of the peculiar rule and sudden demise of the Romanian leader, which proceeds in tandem with a bemused account of the uneven and uncertain development of a CANDU reactor at Cernavoda, is told through a combination of narratives from diverse perspectives as well as “documents” that convey contemporary attitudes. The latter are especially amusing as they mimic the style and content of letters, despatches, parliamentary hearings and “pillow talk” from electronic eavesdrops. As one tribute to the author, it was difficult to choose an extract — the supposed KGB tape of Nicolae and Elena contemplating the assassination of Mikhail Gorbachev and the naive letter of the deputy prime minister of Canada reporting on a visit to Romania are particularly wonderful creations – but the attention of bout readers would likely be drawn to the farewell despatch of Canada’s ambassador to Romania. As Roberts indicates in a note accompanying the text, this was “not the author’s official final report” that he sent when he concluded his mission in Bucharest, however much it resembles messages of that kind. The extract printed below is from Revenge On Christmas Day: Fact and Fiction in Bucharest by Peter Roberts, published by Chestnut Publishing Group (to whom we express our thanks for their permission to publish these passages).
La Revedere / Until We Meet Again]
The Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa
The Ambassador of Canada to Romania, Bucharest
28 August, 1983
After four years here, I am leaving Romania tomorrow en route to the U.S.S.R. After my final visit with Ceauşescu, which I will first describe, a number of thoughts occurred to me about this country, its leadership and its relations with Canada and the world which I would like to share with you and some of our colleagues.
Upon learning the date I was to leave the post, I immediately sought a farewell meeting with President Ceaușescu and Prime Minister Oprea. They both agreed to see me, but both were on holiday on the Black Sea at Neptune. There and in a string of unhappily named resorts (Olimp, Venus, Saturn, and so on) the Romanians have in recent years created an extraordinarily ugly row of high-rise hotels, attracting sea-hungry holiday makers. These come for the most part from Eastern Europe, but also from England, France, and West Germany, attracted by low prices, but not repelled by bad food and service. In summer, the Black Sea is literally black – with people. To find a space on the sand, or in the water, is an adventure. There is a kind of communal life in the high-rise hotels. Someone plays the piano, someone else the accordion, people sing and dance, much Romanian beer is consumed, together with a certain amount of the national firewater, juica.
An added advantage for those from the West is the thrill of a venture into the darkest communist heartland. For the Romanians, there is the thrill of earning desperately needed foreign exchange — hard or soft doesn’t really matter. All summer the big jets roll in and out of Constanța airport, and the Germans from the DDR, in their stinking little Trabants, jam the roads through Hungary and Romania. Even the Hungarians, mortal enemies of Romania though they be, but land-locked though they be also, benefit from this Black Sea bonanza. They collect transit visa fees in the tens of thousands of dollars from all who make the journey by car, bus, or train.
So, I took the early morning plane to Constanța, a lovely old port with crumbling nineteenth century streets and dramatic Roman remains. Its ancient Latin name was Tomis. The poet Ovid was banished and died there in ADI7. It is near the lovely wild reaches of the Danube delta, and the ancient Greek colony at Istria, to which Greek sailors made their way years before Christ, and where remain a couple of their marble columns. Usually, on our visits to the Black Sea, my wife and I stayed by preference in the decaying hotels of Constanța rather than in the high-rise ones further south. But this time, to be near my interlocutors at Neptune, I joined the milling throng in that place, booking a room where I could spend a placid hour or two doing my homework in preparation for my two calls.
My first appointment was with Prime Minister Oprea, at noon, for lunch. My homework done, I still had a couple of hours in hand, so sought the beach. It was already thronged, but not unhappily. People were content in the sun, away from their drab home lives, seeming not to mind the density of the seaside population. Swimming was out of the question in the shallow, muddy, crowded water. I decided on watching and listening, and was rewarded with some insights into the average East European family on its summer Everyone here knows that Ceaușescu takes a nap after lunch. Always. So when my lunch with Oprea ended – very agreeably, with a glass of poire; the nomenklatura in this country lack nothing – I had another hour to fill before my 3 o’clock meeting with the great leader himself. I spent it in my hotel room, going over the instructions contained in your tel 1278 of Aug. 10 (which of course I carried in my pocket) to be sure I knew what you wanted me to say, and that I had all the necessary Romanian words firmly under my belt. Then, to my surprise, a presidential driver arrived at my door to deliver me to the Conducator. The car was Ceaușescu’s usual modest Dacia, although Oprea’s had been a Mercedes.
Again there was no visible security, except a solitary policeman in uniform, around Ceaușescu’s villa. My guess is that there were at least a hundred Securitate agents hidden in bushes and flowerpots, and that I passed through electronic scanners on my way in. But I have called many times on Ceaușescu; by now they must regard me as harmless.
Ceauşescu, when we started talking, said he was pleased the nuclear project was moving again, credit having been restored. I raised the points in your telegram to which I referred. I said that we would want to discuss the president’s visit with Foreign Minister Andrei when he made his forthcoming visit. I said that we hoped Romania would participate in Expo 86. The president seemed briefed on this, and said Romania would participate if the cost were not too high. We will follow up at a lower level. After much soul-searching I raised the Voicu case, asking for special consideration. The president did not answer directly but said that Canada and Romania had no serious difficulties in “this area”. (He meant “family reunification,” but refrained from using the buzzwords.) The reason I am concerned is that there are many other deserving cases (one Canadian sponsor wrote to me asking me to use my farewell call to intervene on his behalf and there may be some hard feelings among Canadian sponsors if it becomes known that we singled out one particular family. The more so if the démarche succeeds.
Thus ended my last talk with Nicolae Ceaușescu.
As I left to catch the evening plane to Bucharest, I thought about Ceaușescu. ambitious village peasant, he would want to be remembered as the creator of a new, modern Romania, perhaps even the father of his people. Instead, he would be remembered as the ogre and tyrant he undoubtedly was, his dreams frustrated by others, notably his beloved Elena. Therein lay his tragedy.
Since that meeting I have tried to collect my thoughts about life in this country, and life between them and us. What follows is the result of my rumination.
It is common to say that the nuclear project is the heart of the relationship with Romania. I think not. It is certainly the heart of this embassy’s activity, accounting for a large part of our correspondence and daily work. But that is another matter. It seems to me that the relations between any two countries are by definition political, and to say that we have a relationship with this country because we have sold them some nuclear equipment, technology and services is misleading. Nevertheless, developments in the nuclear project over the past five years, and especially during the time of financial troubles over the past eighteen months, have affected the two governments’ perceptions of one another, and thus indirectly the political relationship. I like to think that the changes have been in the direction of greater realism on both sides and are healthy.
The Romanians now understand that the signature of the agreements in 1978 did not make them immune from the politics of nuclear energy or those of export financing. The Canadians now realize that they are dealing with a respectable nuclear partner with a substantial infrastructure and advanced manufacturing capacity. And, most importantly, possessing through its leader implacable political will and the means to enforce it.
One of the things which the recent CANDU inspection team discovered in Romania was that this same political will has reversed, in two years, a very bad balance of payments and current account situation, and given the country a healthy surplus, scheduled to become healthier still. That was achieved mainly by severe reductions in imports and other forms of hard-currency outflows. It hit hard both Romanian industry and the Romanian consumer, but it has also hit hard Romania’s trading partners. Canadian exports to Romania dropped drastically between 1980 and 1982, and show no sign of revival this year. Except for sales of CANDU equipment over the next few years, there does not seem much hope of a substantial development of Canadian exports to Romania.
We cannot have it both ways. If we demand a healthy Romanian economy as a condition of restoring our credit, we cannot object when the Romanians take the necessary measures, not only with Canada but with all trading partners, especially in the West.
Cultural relations with East European countries (not the USSR) are accorded in Canadian policy one of the lowest priorities in the world. There is almost no money for Romania, and therefore a very meagre cultural program. Since the Romanians have no money themselves for sending artists abroad, except those few (not always the best) capable of earning enough to pay their way, cultural and academic exchanges have remained at a low level. Nevertheless they exist. We have mounted four major cultural events in the past four years, and many minor ones. Enough to keep us in the public eye.
The official and immensely successful visit to Bucharest of our colleague Pierre Trottier, Canadian poet and ambassador to UNESCO, to lecture to the Union of Writers on Canadian poetry and read his own work (which has already been translated and published in this country, was an example of what can be done with very little money. On the other hand, the abrupt cancellation by the Romanians of a long-planned archaeological exhibition which was to have toured Canada, soured the atmosphere in the Canadian museums and set matters back in that realm. In short, there is a cultural relationship, weak and starved, but still able to attract some attention.
To return where I began. Relations between countries are political or they are nothing. Our nuclear relationship with Romania is no guarantee of a political relationship. That is not to say that the nuclear relationship has no political content. It has much. Ministers and senior officials meet over it. Heads of government and state are drawn into it. Most important, hundreds of young engineers and technicians cross the Atlantic to impart (in Romania) or to absorb (in Canada) skills and information, even if not all of them return to spread the word of what they have seen.
That helps, but it is not enough. Of course, official Romanians are hard to deal with on the political side. They are doctrinaire, suspicious, secretive, given to empty slogans and shibboleths, careless of the welfare of people, capable of intimidation and even of assassination as political tools.
That is, unfortunately, their Russian legacy. They lie athwart the great dividing lines of Europe: Rome left them with an ineradicable desire to belong to the Western world, but later history made them orthodox in religion and Eastern in subservience. That complicates the political problem, but does not mean that we can forget about it.
As a world power, as a country of immigration for Romanians, and especially as a member of the Western alliance, we need to involve ourselves politically with Romania, and with the other countries that have the misfortune to be under the Soviet thumb. For beyond “them,” the officials, there is the unhappy population of this country, with many people of high civilization who long for a sign of life from us. Anything at all. Here there is no contradiction. They (ordinary people) like it when we (the West) come to talk to their leaders, and they like it when we come to talk more directly to them, through the arts, films, radio, books. Both kinds of contact help them convince themselves that there may one day be an end to their misery.
The Romanian population has no recent tradition of seizing its fate in its own hands. It let itself be peacefully swallowed by the fascists before and during the war. It shares with Bulgaria the distinction of being one of only two East European countries never to have given the Russians any trouble. Nevertheless the Romanians profoundly dislike their rulers and would gladly trade their much-vaunted independent foreign policy, which is supposed to bring plenty of jam tomorrow, for a domestic policy that yields some jam today.
It is that reality, no doubt, that worries Ceaușescu most. Among the relatively young men and women around him there must be several who would be glad to be the instruments of consigning him, his wife, their absurd cult of personality, their brutal system of internal control, and their primitive notions of economic management, to the ashcan.
Today in Eastern Europe, including Romania, many have made their peace with their regimes. Many have a stake in the system. Nearly all fatalistically believe that the only alternative to living with it is to get out. But the great majority – including in my view even some of those who have power and privilege
– would abandon the whole cumbersome harness if their “geo-political situation” permitted. Last week in Craiova I had a long talk with the party first secretary and head of the local government. In the part of Romania worst hit by food shortages this year, he conceded that their were many difficulties. But he said, “God put us here on this piece of earth, not in Canada or elsewhere. So we must make the best of it.”
For virtually all Romanians, with power and without, Italy is the birthplace of the nation. France is the cultural homeland, Germany the economic model and Greece and Yugoslavia are the neighbours to be cultivated. The USA and Canada are some kind of remote and unattainable paradise.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2005) — Summer/Fall 2005 // Été/Automne 2005, pp. 25–28. Read the rest of this issue →
