The Eighth Tribe, 1980 (7. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1980-07-01 / 7. szám

I

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT AMERICA’S NEXT SHAH-TYPE PROBLEM WILL BE CEAUSESCU: THE RUMANIAN DICTATOR?

by Endre Nánay

Events in Iran will go down in history. Fresh evidence shows that the Shah’s harsh domestic rule provoked his people’s uprising. The size of this movement grew so rapidly and dangerously, that the American president sent his personal representative

— General Huyser — to Iran to secretly arrange for the Shah’s departure, even though it did not serve American oil and national interests.

As far as the United States is concerned, Rumania is by no means another Iran from an economic or strategic point of view. The Rumanian communist dictator, Ceasescu, tries to make himself popular with the West merely through trivial shows of obstinacy against the Soviets. Ceausescu creates the impression that he is a “big boy” even behind the Iron Curtain,

— that he has the courage to oppose his boss, Brezhnev. America does not want to see that this kind of buffoonery is an obvious game of deception.

Ceausescu is a good and loyal communist who hands over to Comrade Brezhnev not only Rumania’s income of hard currency, but sends in to the KGB all of the sensitive information he can collect through his doubly-play activities. This cheap ploy is addressed only to the naive, easy believer, — the gullible West, — which does not want to recognize the comedy-wrapped tragedy.

In return for his lip-service, Ceausescu collects from the West, just as from the Soviets. The Soviets overlook Ceausescu’s extremisms, his special nationalism packed in communist slogans, his chauvinism, his abuses against the minorities mainly against the three million Hungarians living in Rumania. Brezhnev does not want to concern himself with Ceausescu’s corrupt family despotism, or even his facist activities.

It is well known that the largest minority group in Europe is that of the Hungarians in Rumania. Furthermore, it is a generally known fact that Transylvania (Erdély) was taken by force from Hungary by Rumania after W.W. I. and then given to Rumania by the Treaty of Trianon. For years, the Rumanian Stalin, Ceausescu, has been committing mass atrocities against the Hungarians living in Rumania, mostly in Erdély, Transylvania. He systematically orders deportations, forced displacements, and transmigrations — compulsory exchanges of population (from Transylvania to the Regat, old Rumania). He also closes Hungarian schools and cultural organizations. Ceaun

sescu’s goal is to completely assimilate the three million Hungarians, who are the orignal inhabitants of Transylvania, dating back a thousand years. He seeks to create a nationalistic Rumania in the middle of the international-socialistic ocean. In fact, he is totally committing Rumania to national-communist dogmatism with all the Marxist-Leninist trappings and slogans, as a member of the Warsaw Pact and as a satellite of the Soviet Union.

The entire country of Rumania lives under Ceausescu’s terror, in misery, while he is acting as a peace-making prophet throughout the world.

Sometimes American officials praise Ceausescu’s regime as the only real friend of the West behind the Iron Curtain, the brave adversary of the Soviets, but never mention the fact that after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, which was the sole and only real, and meaningful armed action against Soviets until today, the leaders of that revolution, Imre Nagy and General Maiéter were executed in Rumania by Rumanians.

Nobody wants to remember in official circles that in both World Wars Rumania stabbed her allied friends in the back. America still trusts in such a “friend”.

We can find some explanation for America’s friendship with Rumania in Ceausescu’s alleged performance of special diplomatic services to the United States. Does the most powerful nation in the world, The United States and her diplomatic machinery need such an intermediary? This intermediary is known to his countrymen as the Rumanian Stalin. Did the United States really require Ceausescu’s help, as some members of Congress said it did, in making peace between Israel and Egypt or in renewing American talks with China? Do those Congressmen want to hand over to Ceausescu Europe’s largest national minority group of three million Hungarians residing in Transylvania and in Rumania proper? Should they be used to pay Ceausescu for his condemnation of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan? Is it realistic to state that Rumania is a true friend of the U.S. but Hungary is not? Thirty-five years after W.W. II. we still cannot distinguish between rulers and the ruled, the people and their unelected government. If we examine the Rumanian-Hungarian situation within the context of today’s thoroughly altered circumstances, after Iran and Afghanistan, we realize that it doesn’t look too different from the Iranian condition prior to the shah’s departure. Ceausescu’s inhuman and irresponsible power-hungry manipulations are the subject of everyday political discussion throughout Europe, even behind the Iron Curtain. Only the U.S. overlooks the evidence and disregards the facts. It continues to patronize a cruel and in-THE TRANSYLVANIAN QUARTERLY