Day 158 - The President's Coming To Town

Romania played an interesting role in the international arena during the time I lived there. It was part of the Warsaw Pact, placing it firmly in the red camp of nations, but President Ceauceșcu wasn't above playing his friends off against one another. In contrast to the Soviet Motherland which emphasized comradeship, commonality, the sameness of everyone, Ceauceșcu encouraged regional diversity among Romanians. There weren't just Romanians, there were Oltenians, Transilvanians, Muntenians, Walachians, Dobrogeans, Bucovinans, Moldovans, Maramureșean, Banațean, the regional groupings of Romanians with their distinctive traditional folk music, folk costumes, and village building styles, all of which could be seen in the Village Museum in Bucharest. Where in Moldova 15 years later, we saw all people in villages and walking along the highways all dressed the same, in Romania, the people outside the cities dressed in traditional clothing of the type that had been worn since Vlad Ţepeș resisted both the Turks and the Hungarians who traded opportunities to rule the geographic area that is now Romania. In Moldova those who had the means to ride on the highways were in cars, trucks, or on tractors while in Romania many still made their way between villages in wagons piled high with straw and pulled by horses or cattle.

Ceauceșcu was pleased to see his people differentiated from all his neighbors.

Politically, Ceauceșcu also sought opportunities to thumb his nose at his neighbors. He liked to be seen as making his own way in the world, not kowtowing to the Soviet Union or other larger nations. One example was his hosting, secretly, talks involving President Anwar Sadat of Egypt that led to Sadat's visit to Israel in late 1977. Those talks occurred in Bucharest early in my time in Romania, on a weekend when I traveled Thursday evening by train from Iasi to Bucharest.

Before I left Iași, my Fulbright researcher friend, Paul, asked how I had managed to get a ticket for that evening. He had gone that morning to buy a ticket, but he was told no one from the university was being allowed to travel that weekend. I must have purchased my ticket several days before, so I went to the train station Thursday evening and had no trouble getting a seat.

When I arrived in Bucharest that Friday morning, many of my friends expressed surprise that I had been able to get on the train. At the university in Bucharest, students weren't allowed to leave their dormitory buildings. No one knew why this was so, but there were, as was always the case in Romania, rumors. That weekend, my life went by quite normally. Most of my friends in Bucharest were connected to the embassy or the American School, and there were no restrictions placed on their movements. There may have been a few more Romanian policemen around the embassy, and they may have been a little more aggressive in demanding to see identification of people passing it on the street. But nothing really interfered.

When I returned to Iași, I learned that others had not been so lucky. In addition to my friend Paul not being able to buy a ticket on Thursday, the students in Iasi were also confined to their dormitories for the weekend. And we heard that one of the American Fulbright lecturers in Cluj-Napoca who wasn't able to get a plane or train ticket decided to drive to Bucharest for the weekend, but she was turned back on the highway. Still we had no knowledge of why.

Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat, www.aljazeera.com

When President Sadat finally did travel to Israel for that historic visit in November of 1977, the reason for the clamp down on the students in the country, especially the foreign students, was clear. Romania was one of the only countries in the world to have official representatives of both Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in their capital city. Iran was another. There were large numbers of Arab students in Romania in all university cities. And there were Israeli students, including Israeli Arabs. Given the overwhelmingly negative reaction among the Arab world to President Sadat's visit to Israel, it was clear there were valid security concerns about what would happen in Romania if word got out about President Sadat's presence in Romania and the purpose for his visit.

Four years later, President Sadak was assassinated by one of his people. Eight years later again, Ceauceșcu met a similar fate, though without the same level of surprise.